


A Fire of Unknown Origin

by ninhursag



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Femslash, Genderbending, Multi, girl!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 15:06:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 7
Words: 35,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decades after his mother and baby sister died in a fire of demonic origin Dean Winchester picks up a hitchhiker off the interstate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A series of girl!Sam, separated young stories. Complete as it is going to get

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: A Fire of Unknown Origin (Girl!Sam/Jess)** _

Title: A Fire of Unknown Origin  
Author: [](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/profile)[**ninhursag**](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: Adult  
Summary: A prequel to [Fire Took My Baby Away](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/54348.html). How Jess Moore met the craziest girl in school and fell in love-- an uphill battle all the way.   
Notes: Yay [](http://community.livejournal.com/mini_nanowrimo/profile)[**mini_nanowrimo**](http://community.livejournal.com/mini_nanowrimo/) for giving me the push to work on this. And thank you [](http://kassidy62.livejournal.com/profile)[**kassidy62**](http://kassidy62.livejournal.com/) for the kindly beta. All mistakes are mine.  


  
In kindergarten Samantha Rogers was Jessica Moore's very best friend. Sam was blonde then, sunny and bright, before her hair darkened. Sam's Mom used to tie up her hair with ribbons, bright and sparkly enough to make Jess jealous. Sam would laugh and laugh, showing her missing front teeth, and spin around, making those ribbons dance while Jess reached for them like she could slow Sam down.

Jess never forgot the morning Sam came in without ribbons in her hair, without her hair combed at all. Sam's eyes were wide and blank and her blonde hair was tangled over her eyes. Miss Jane, the teacher, took Sam aside with a comb and Sam followed her wordlessly.

Sam didn't cry, didn't say a word. Jess didn't find out that Sam's mom was dead 'til afterward, because after that day Sam didn't come to school. Miss Jane sat them down in a circle and told them Sam was in the hospital and really hurt bad, but they could all write her get-well cards.

"What happened?" Jess remembered asking, whispering and rubbing her eyes. She wanted Sam to be there to spin and spin those ribbons around.

"There was a fire in her house," Miss Jane said solemnly and patted the desk next to Jess' hand. "Sam got hurt and her Mommy went to heaven." Jess worked extra hard on her card, even used Sam's favorite color of glitter, but Sam never came back to class.

Later, later Jess would think she remembered it wrong-- she must have. How could Sam have gotten hurt the day _after_ her Mom went to heaven? It didn't make sense.

The next time Jess went to school with Sam Rogers was in junior high, but if Sam recognized her she didn't say anything about it. Jess wasn't even sure she recognized Sam—she didn't think anyone could change that much.

Sam's hair had turned from yellow to dishwater brown and hung in her face unless one of the teacher's yelled at her to get it out. Instead of dresses and ribbons, Sam wore threadbare jeans and flannel shirts that hung past her fingertips. She changed in the bathroom for gym and still wore sweats that covered her from neck to wrists-- if she bothered to show up for gym at all.

The one time Jess tried to wave at her in the hall all she got back was a blank and vacant stare. That and an elbow in the side from Lisa Montgomery along with a hissed, "Don't look at the freak, she might burn your eyeballs out with her ugly. I heard she burned her mom to death when she was in kindergarten."

Jess pursed her lips but she didn't say anything. No way was she going to go up against the most popular girl in school over someone who wouldn't even say hi to her in the halls. That set the pattern. Most of what she saw of Sam over the next year involved glimpses and whispers about 'that girl,' 'that freak.'

The next time she actually talked to Sam was when they both got called down to the main office and were waiting on the chairs outside the principal's office. Sam pushed her bangs back and smirked at Jess like they talked every single day.

"So, what did you do to get called in here?" she asked. Without the bangs over her face there was a faint, purpling bruise visible over one cheekbone. Jess remembered vague rumors about Sam starting fights and figured they must be true. "I thought you were little Miss Goody-Good."

Jess blinked and rocked back in her seat. "I didn't know you remembered who I was," she said blankly. "Anyway, I don't think I did anything. Why, what did you do?"

Before Sam got a chance to answer the door swung open and they were both called inside. They gave each other sidelong looks. Jess really didn't know what she might have done to get in trouble, never mind trouble that involved Sam. But the Mr. Papa was smiling, all shiny and pleased with himself, like it wasn't trouble at all.

"Miss Moore, Miss Rogers," he said and showed them his teeth. "I just wanted to call you in to congratulate you. You two young ladies are tied for top of the class in your grade."

Jess couldn't help but let her mouth hang open when she stared at Sam. Samantha Rogers? Tied for head of the class? "I didn't know you liked school," she blurted out, and then blushed bright red a second later when she remembered where they both were.

Mr. Papa just chuckled. "I admit, I was surprised too. We'll be expecting more from Miss Rogers in the future, mind you."

Sam looked from him to Jess and then back to him. For just a second Jess caught sight of the old brilliant smile she remembered. Then it twisted. "I wouldn't bother," she said. "Jess can have the 'honor.'" She made air quotes with her fingers. "If that's it, I'm leaving."

They were both open mouthed when Sam walked out the door. When Jess looked back at Mr. Papa he was frowning and shaking his head. "That girl is just trouble," he muttered. "That's what she is."

Jess didn't say anything. She figured it was back to being ignored by Sam right up until she walked home from school that night and found her right there on the end of her block, leaning against a tree with her hands stuffed into her jeans. One hazel eye peered out from under the mess of hair.

When she saw Jess coming she pushed herself off the tree and waved. "Hey," she said.

Jess blinked. "Uh. Hey," she said after a pause. "What's up?"

Sam shrugged. "You're in Dahmler's Latin class, right?" She didn't wait for a response, just kept talking like Jess was trying to interrupt her or something. "I'm thinking about switching out of French for my language elective, but I want to know if it's any good, first."

Jess shrugged her shoulders and tried not to stare. "He's okay. Uh. Is that all?"

Sam rolled her eyes and made a twisted up face. "Yeah, sure. Whatever. I just wanted you to know I remembered who you were." She turned around just like that, like she was just going to take off. Jess probably should have let her go.

Instead she acted on pure impulse and reached out, grabbing Sam's shoulder. "Wait, Sam," she said. She'd have gotten out more if Sam hadn't rounded on her and punched her in the face.

The next thing she knew Jess' world went red with hurt and she could hear Sam's voice, small and panicked in her ear. Ow. So that was what getting punched was like. "Shit, shit, I'm sorry," Sam mumbled, soft and frantic. "I didn't mean-- I mean. You grabbed me and I just. I'm sorry. Shit, I'm so sorry."

Jess found herself staring into Sam's huge, wide open hazel eyes and had the weirdest thought, that those eyes were definitely better than anything she'd ever seen in a magazine. Her head was spinning.

"I'll forgive you," she said, and she was surprised how steady her voice came out, especially with the way her ears were ringing. "If you come inside and hold the icepack for me."

Sam stopped mumbling and stared at her. Amazingly, those eyes got even wider, big as a puppy's. Jess found herself smiling. "And I get a free shot next time," she added, like she'd imagine one of the guys on the football team saying.

She was rewarded with the faint beginnings of Sam's smile. "Damn, you're easy," Sam said and Jess felt weird and warm, and not just because her face was throbbing. She was definitely going to use that shot for something, though.

The next morning Jess committed social suicide for the week by planting herself right next to Sam at lunch, and just like that they were friends again.

Jess' parents didn't say a word about it, no matter how ragged Sam came in looking or how much food she tucked away whenever it was offered, but they did exchange glances that Jess knew couldn't be good. "She's really smart at school," Jess offered, but her mom just pursed her lips and shook her head.

It wasn't until Sam started to climb into Jess' open window at nights that things got really weird. The first time was totally out of the blue. Jess had been curled up in bed, listening to the rain pattering on the window, reading with a flashlight when she was supposed to be asleep.

The knock on the window almost made her fall right out of bed. She peered out through her fingers and saw the looming shape behind the glass, but it wasn't until she pointed her flashlight at it that she recognized Sam.

"What are you doing?" she hissed as she popped the window open and dragged Sam in by the wrists. Sam's wrists were wet. Her clothes were soaked, dripping onto Jess' rug.

If that bugged Sam she didn't show it. She just gave a lopsided grin and leaned back against the wall. "Hey, so I think I might have left my math homework over at your place. Mind if I check?"

Jess blinked at her. "You're a psycho, you know that?" she demanded, waving her flashlight in Sam's face. The shadows drew marks on Sam's skin, like purple bruises.

"Yeah, you bet."

It wasn't until Jess flipped on the light that she realized that it wasn't shadows at all. She bit back a gasp, already reaching out for Sam. "Are you okay? Did you fall or something?"

Sam danced back out of arm's reach. "Yeah, fell off my bike. Fucking ow," she muttered. "So, have you got my homework, or what?"

"No, I don't, crazy person," Jess said and stepped after Sam, matching her step by step without thinking about it until they were both up by the wall, Sam pressed against it and Jess closer than she'd meant to get. She flushed when she realized how close she was and sidled back, but Sam stayed where she was, shoulder blades flat on the wall. "Aren't you freezing? I can get you a towel to dry off, at least."

"I'm cool," Sam said, and she almost sounded it until she broke into a fit of gasping and sneezing, hands over her mouth to muffle it.

Jess rolled her eyes. "Sure you are. Now stuff it or you'll wake up my mom and dad."

Once the sneezing fit passed, Sam leaned back on her elbows and smiled. "Well, I wouldn't want to get you in trouble or anything, Jess."

Jess just shook her head. "Seriously. Why are you here--" she stopped before the question got all the way out. Sam was still sagging a little against the wall and her bruises looked even more stark against her pale, wet skin. She was shivering visibly and her layers of shirts were plastered to her shoulders and breasts. "Why are you so pathetic looking? Just stay still. You are definitely getting a towel and something dry to wear."

Without waiting for a reply, without even trying to decide what that expression on Sam's face meant, Jess slipped out the door on her tiptoes. Her parents had one of those white noise maker things to help with her Dad's insomnia and that was probably the only reason they weren't knocking down her door so far, no reason to tempt fate.

She was almost surprised to find Sam was still there when she got back, exactly where Jess had left her, pressed up against the wall. Her arms were around her stomach now and her eyes were closed. "Come on," Jess said softly. "Let's get you out of that wet stuff. You can wear one of my nightgowns and we'll find your homework in the morning."

"You said you didn't have my homework," Sam muttered without opening her eyes.

"Oh, what, and now you actually listen to me?" Jess said. She walked over to Sam with the towels and nightgown flung over one shoulder. "Come on. Seriously, you're going to get pneumonia or something if you don't get into something dry."

Without waiting for a response, Jess reached for the hem of Sam's sweatshirt. It was sopping wet, tangling in her hands and when it rode up so did the T-shirt underneath it. For just a second Jess' knuckle brushed Sam's skin.

Scars. Jess had seen scars before. Small ones from cuts and cooking fires, mostly. She'd never seen scars like this in real life-- raised lines and twisted flesh, like something out of a movie about burn victims. Or a slasher flick.

It was just a second, just a flash that probably made the scars look worse than a long stare. Then Sam was arching back, away from her touch like a scalded cat, hissing and showing her teeth. "Who said you could touch me?" Sam spat. Her eyes were big and looked very green and very black all at once.

"I'm sorry," Jess said. She could still feel the scars, like they were imprinted on her fingertips. "I didn't know."

"I didn't ask you to be sorry," Sam said. Jess could see Sam's hands, balled up and white knuckled. It was pure, bright impulse that made her move.

"Yeah, well, I can be if I want to be," she said. She reached out, fast as she could, before Sam could yell, before Sam could move, before Sam could _leave_. She grabbed Sam's hand in her and tugged it up, pressing her lips against those scarred knuckles.

If anything, Sam's eyes were even bigger when Jess looked up at her from under her eyelashes. "What makes you think I'm a dyke?" Sam spluttered, but her mouth looked soft, lips parted.

"Who said I did? I don't even know if I'm a dyke," Jess said and found herself smiling and shaking her head. She expected Sam to back off hard any second now, but Sam didn't. Just stood there, still and soft and watching her.

For a long moment, Sam stayed still. When she moved it was fast and all at once. She arched forward and wrapped her palms across Jess' cheeks, cradling the planes of her face and tugging her into a hard, vicious kiss. Sam tasted like salt and rain water. A little stale, a little sweet. Warmer and wetter and a thousand times more real than a peck on the lips during truth or dare or a sweaty boy's hands on hers.

"Okay," Jess breathed against Sam's mouth when she let her up enough. "Maybe I am a dyke."

Sam smiled against her mouth, hard enough for Jess to feel the curve of her lips. "Maybe," she murmured. "What are you going to do about it?"

"This," Jess said and kissed her again. It was a softer kiss this time, almost delicate. Sam's chest pressed against hers, soft swell of breasts and sharp rise of collar bone. For a long time after, she didn't speak at all, just let Sam rest between her and the wall and listened to her breathe. "You want to tell me what happened?" Jess finally asked.

Sam lifted her chin and rolled her eyes. "It's called kissing. When two people really, really like each other--"

"Oh, shut it," Jess spat. Sam's lashes fluttered down and her cheeks went pink. She looked at Jess out from under the lashes and didn't say anything. "I meant that your story about falling off bikes and climbing in my window in the rain and the dark because of homework is lame."

"Maybe I just wanted to see if I could get you to kiss me?" Sam shrugged. Her hands were still clenched up tight.

Jess snorted a rough laugh. "You're such a liar, Samantha Rogers."

Sam smiled, bright and sweet and showing all of her teeth. "Don't be so sure I'm lying, Jessica Moore."

"Bitch," Jess muttered. Sam's smile widened and her hands loosened at her sides.

"Yeah, what you gonna do about it?" she asked.

Jess just shook her head. "I'm going to bed. You coming?" She flushed at Sam's raised eyebrow. "I mean to sleep, Jesus."

"Yeah, sure okay," Sam said. She didn't move though, not until Jess took her by the hands and led her toward the bed and put the nightgown into her hand.

"I won't look if you don't want me to," she said, remembering the feel of scars. It made her stomach hurt, but she wanted to see just as much as she didn't. She wanted to see Sam.

"Turn around then," Sam said and looked her right in the eye. "Turn around and close your eyes. I'll tell you when you can look." Jess almost protested, but the set of Sam's mouth stopped her. She turned to the wall and squeezed her eyes shut and tried not to think about how everything was different.

\

Everything was different and nothing was. Jess' dad, who worked for the school board, wasn't the first to bring it up, but he was definitely the loudest.

"Your teachers have been telling me that you're friends with the Rogers girl. That girl's troubled, Jess." Her father pressed his palm to his chin like he was trying to add in one extra bit of seriousness. "I don't want you seeing her without supervision."

Jess rolled her eyes and wondered if he knew exactly how ridiculous he looked. "She is not. You don't even know her."

"She has a reputation for unruliness." He shook his head.

"Unruliness?" Jess demanded. She pressed her hands down flat on the breakfast table and straight out glared. "What does that even mean, Dad?"

"I know you're young to understand these things, but you listen to me, Jessica Lee Moore. I'd rather you didn't have to learn a lesson like this the hard way." His mouth twisted and he looked away. "The girl won't do you any good."

"Say what you mean, Dad," Jess repeated sharply. "She didn't do anything wrong."

He sucked in a breath and looked at the table then back up at Jess. "You're trying to be a nice girl and befriend her. I understand that. The Rogers girl, though... she's been suspended for fighting three times. A girl! Suspended for fighting! That and she has a reputation for... not behaving well with young men."

"Dad!" Jess hissed. "I can't believe you said that! You and Mom always said that you were feminists and I shouldn't listen to rumors like that about people."

He rubbed his hand over his face and for a second he looked old instead of stupid. "Jessica. Jess. I know this sounds unreasonable to you, but girls like that-- I'm not saying don't talk to her at school. It's just... I want you to be careful. I love you, baby."

"What do you think she's going to do, get into a fight with me?" Jess muttered. "Do I even want to know?" Without waiting for a response, she jumped off her chair and ran out the door, barely pausing to grab her backpack on her way out.

Her dad didn't call after her, so she knew he knew he was wrong. He had to be wrong, he just didn't know Sam. That Rogers girl... fuck it. Fuck reputations.

Sam... Jess thought that maybe, maybe Sam loved her. And maybe that was the one argument she was never going to be able to use with her parents.

\

Sam had a favorite spot for lunch that Jess didn't find out about for weeks, even after Sam started climbing into her window at night. Until the morning Sam grabbed her by the shoulder and half dragged her off to one of the little soundproofed practice spaces behind the music room, Jess had just assumed they had different lunch periods.

"I want to show you something," Sam said, before she locked the door behind them and then pushed her down onto a piano bench.

Jess tipped her head up and grinned while Sam loomed over her. "What?" she asked.

"This," Sam said, in a grave, quiet voice that completely didn't match her wicked smile. Before Jess had a chance to ask she straddled the bench and leaned over to kiss Jess full on the mouth.

She tasted sweet, like vending machine chocolate, and whatever hesitancy had ever been in her kisses was gone. Jess let herself be pushed back and then pulled back into it, see-sawing until she almost slid off the bench, holding onto Sam's shoulders and kissing back like her breath depended on it.

It was crazy making, oxygen draining and absolutely amazing. Just feeling the heat of Sam's mouth and the wetness of her tongue. The strength of her hands. Jess itched to touch skin and it was pure instinct to try and do it, try to slide her hands under the neck of Sam's flannel shirt and feel how warm and smooth it was underneath.

When Sam shoved her off she slid right off the bench and crashed on the ground. "Ow, fuck," Jess howled. "What was that for?"

Sam didn't say anything for a second while Jess pulled herself up to her feet and brushed herself off. "Sorry," she finally mumbled, like Jess' glare was actually getting to her. She stared down at her feet where they were tapping against the cracked linoleum.

"Don't tell me you're shy," Jess hissed. She settled gingerly back down on the bench. "You can just say if you don't want to do stuff, you don't have to go around shoving people or hitting them. I mean, even my dad said--" She stopped herself abruptly, but it was too late.

Sam's gaze flicked on to her, unnervingly still. "Your dad said what?"

"My dad said you have a reputation," Jess blurted out and then looked away. "I mean... you know. If even he knows about it, you must have..."

Sam snorted. Jess didn't look up to see what her expression was like. The tone of voice was enough for her to fill in the blanks. "Oh yeah. I must have. I must have fucked the whole football team at a party one time, right? I must have swallowed so much come I had to get my stomach pumped. That's what Lisa Montgomery tells everyone, isn't it?"

"That's a fucked up thing to say," Jess whispered. "And no, she never said that."

Sam made a rough sound that was almost a laugh. "Maybe she never said that to you. Someone sure said it to your Dad, though, didn't they? Or something just as fucked up. And you believed it."

Jess snapped up to attention. Whatever she thought she'd see in Sam's face, this wasn't it. She didn't look as angry as she sounded. She didn't look angry at all. She just looked haggard, like she hadn't slept well in weeks.

"I never said that," Jess said.

Sam shrugged. "You believe it, though. Deep down in your gut, you're all like... why isn't she letting me touch her if everyone else did, right?"

Jess blinked. "That's insane."

"Fuck you, I am not insane. You _are_ thinking that whether you admit it or not." It would have been better if Sam sounded angry when she said. Instead the words came out dull and tired. "Get out."

"No," Jess spat. "I will not."

Sam shook her head. "Fine. Then I will."

Even when Sam walked out the door without looking back, Jess half expected her to turn around. Really expected her to climb in the window that night, just like always. She even left the window wide open enough for the rank stink of rotting leaves and the late autumn night to get in, but all Jess got from that was a sore throat from the cold.

Jess figured it was up to her to make a move if Sam didn't, so she went right back to the music room at lunch the next day, wearing her favorite sweater, the one even her mom said brought out her eyes. She had the sleeves rolled up and she was determined to make the stubborn bitch listen for once.

Of course Sam managed to send everything into crazy town again. The door to the music room was unlocked when Jess got there, so it never occurred to her to worry about going in. It never occurred to her that she was going to find Sam straddling a boy she didn't recognize over the piano bench wearing nothing but her ever present flannel shirt.

It was weird-- that was the thing that stuck in Jess' brain. Not that Sam was fucking a boy in the middle of school with the door unlocked. Not that Sam was fucking a boy. No, it was that the damned shirt was still on, covering her from neck to wrists. All the bare skin was knees and calves, long and pale with splattered scars just barely peeking out from what Jess could see of her thighs.

Sam turned to look at her, but the boy didn't. Her face was still, eyes narrow. Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead and cheeks. "We're busy. Find somewhere else to be," Sam said, cool as anything, like even her breathing was barely disturbed.

"Yeah," the boy panted out. His face was red and his eyes were big and green, but Jess couldn't tell if he was handsome or ugly. She could barely see anything at all, just Sam's bare legs curled around him. "We're busy. Beat it, bitch."

Jess didn't remember leaving, but she must have left fast, because the next thing she knew she was off school grounds completely, running like she was in a race. Running like the only place she could think about going was home and bed.

She tried not to think of anything at all, just crawled under her blankets and pulled them over her head and didn't think about being stupid, or the way Sam's face looked, beaded with sweat and stilled in concentration. Unsmiling and beautiful.

She had no idea how long she lay curled up where she was. She heard her parents come home, but they believed her when she shouted that she wasn't feeling well. They let her sleep or pretend to sleep. It got dark and quiet again and she was still there, covers over her head, pretending so hard to sleep, like pretending would make it real.

At first Jess thought the window sliding open was her imagination. Even when she heard the sound of Sam's soft cursing or when the bed dipped a little under Sam's weight. Jess could smell the thick stink of alcohol and in a vague way she wondered why she'd imagine Sam drunk. Maybe that made it easier somehow.

"Do you believe in demons, Jess?" Sam asked, soft and hoarse.

Jess blinked and lowered her covers just enough that she could see Sam's face, shadowed and outlined in the moonlight. "What?" she whispered. She sounded hoarse too, like she'd been crying.

"Sometimes I feel like there's one living under my skin," Sam continued, like Jess hadn't said anything at all. "And I do... I do these things. I don't even know why."

"I thought you liked me," Jess said and she hated the way she sounded. Like a stupid, romantic, heartbroken little girl. Emphasis on the stupid part.

"Your dad is right about me," Sam said instead of answering. "You shouldn't fight with him. He loves you."

"Why did you do that to me?" Jess said and then felt even dumber. "Why are you here?"

Sam made a low, rough noise. "I don't know. There's something wrong with me. I can't even... it's not like I can even promise to stop. I--"

"You what?" Jess hissed. She pushed her blankets all the way down and sat up in bed. That got her closer to Sam's face, to her beer breath. "You got, what-- wasted and fucked some guy when you knew I'd see it and you what?"

Sam flinched back. "And I'm sorry. Look. I'll go. I'll go and I won't bother you anymore. Just... forget it."

She shifted like she was going to get up, but her reflexes were clearly booze befuddled, because Jess caught hold of her wrist before she got a chance to and held on hard, hard enough to bruise. "Is that what you do?" Jess spat, almost into her ear. "You act like a screw up and then run away instead of fixing it? Is that your modus fucking operandi, Sam?"

Sam went still under her hand. "You're talking like there's something left to fix," she whispered.

Jess turned away. ""You're... like... a maudlin drunk," she muttered, like she wasn't the one hiding under her blankets and acting all emocore.

"Yeah. Well... you're an uptight, prissy bitch," Sam said. The words sounded like a reflex. Sam sucked in an audible breath. "Jess. Please. I'm sorry." Suddenly, stupidly, Jess could feel the tears leaking out of her eyes. They made her chest tighten up and her insides hurt. She knew she hadn't even done anything wrong-- so why did it have to hurt?

"Yeah, I know," Jess told the wall facing away from Sam. "Look. I-- this isn't over, okay? I want to deal with this. Let's--- let's just do it tomorrow. Tomorrow's Saturday, that's a good day to talk."

Sam's hand twisted out of Jess' grip. Slippery bitch. "You want me to go," she said. It wasn't a question, not when she was already on her feet.

"No," Jess replied anyway. "I want you to stay put, lie down and get some sleep." She squeezed her eyes shut and waited, just listening to Sam breathe.

"Fine," Sam finally said, some infinite amount of time later. "Okay."

She kicked her shoes off and crawled into Jess' bed in all her clothes. The sheets were going to smell of dirt and sweat and a liquor store, but Jess couldn't complain, not really. Sam's breathing, fast and uneven, but there with her, soothed her to sleep.

She was a lot more annoyed by the way she woke up in the morning with an empty bed, but she couldn't say she was surprised. She wanted to yell, throw things, pound the walls and wake up her parents, something.

Instead she brushed her teeth as aggressively as humanly possible, left a note to her parents pinned to the fridge with a magnet and rolled her bike out of the garage. Waiting for Sam to come to her was obviously not a good idea. Jess figured it was time to do this like D-Day or something and change the theater of engagement.

She didn't have a really firm idea of what Sam's house looked like in her head. She'd been there once or twice when they were in kindergarten, but it wasn't like she remembered it. From the vague rumors that circulated around school, she'd honestly would have half expected it to be a trailer or something, but it was just a regular aluminum sided subdivision house with peeling white paint.

Other than a shaggy, straggly yard, Sam's house could have been anyone's, could easily have even been Jess'. Jess gritted her teeth, rolled back her shoulders and marched up the front steps, ready to push anyone she had to out of the way.

She half expected Sam to answer the door, but instead it was a stoop shouldered little man with rounded shoulders and bags under his eyes. He looked at Jess like he'd never seen anyone like her in his life. "Mr. Rogers?" Jess asked blankly. She thought she remembered Sam's dad being taller. This man wouldn't have more than an inch or two on his thirteen year old daughter, if that.

"Yes?" he asked with equal blankness.

"I'm Sam's friend," Jess said and plastered a smile on her face. "Is she home?"

He shrugged. His gaze seemed to slide right over her, like she wasn't even there. "It's hard to say with Samantha," he said. His smile was vague and conspiratorial, like Jess had announced she was the cops instead of a friend. "I can't be expected to control her. It's not like she's my real kid, you know."

Jess blinked. For a second she didn't know how to respond at all. "Um. Can I go up to her room and check?" she finally asked.

Mr. Rogers turned his attention back on her. His stare was freaky-- not quite bad touch freaky, like something out of a daytime television movie of the week. Not quite, but still weird enough that Jess got the shivers. "She's on the second floor. If you're sure you want to and you think it's safe," he said. "Samantha's kind of trouble, isn't she?" When the light hit his eyes they glowed a sickly yellow like a weird lighting effect.

Jess bit back the urge to reflexively ask him why that would be with a stellar person like him around. Instead she forced out a fixed grin. "Uh. Sure. I'll go do that then."

She practically ran past him and up the stairs, but not before he called, "Don't say you weren't warned!" at her retreating back. Jess shivered and tried not to listen.

Sam's door was shut but it opened easily enough when Jess turned the knob. Sam was sitting on her bed, cross legged, a heavy book plopped open on her lap. She raised her head and looked quizzically at Jess. "You give up knocking for lent or something?" she asked.

"Your dad's a creep," Jess said instead of answering.

Sam laughed, like it was an answer after all. "Dude, you know how other people wish they were adopted so they weren't related to their families? I'm seriously grateful I really am adopted."

"Yeah," Jess said. Then she couldn't think of what to say next, whatever prepared speech she'd had knocked right out of her head by Sam's father. She ended up just staring at Sam and scuffing her foot against the carpet.

After a long, stretched out silence, Sam seemed to take pity on her. She closed the book and lay it down on the nightstand, then scooted off the bed, hopping to her feet. "So," Sam said. "Here you are."

"You left before I got a chance to talk to you," Jess snapped back and then looked away again. She wasn't angry, weird as that felt. She thought maybe she should still be angry.

"Well, you're here and I'm here. Talk," Sam offered. She stepped closer to Jess, keeping her palms open and by her sides.

"I really like you," Jess said. "I want to... I don't know. I want this to be a thing. You and me."

Sam pursed her lips and made a clicking sound with her tongue. "Okay. You're either out of your mind or a masochist. Or both. Are you both?"

"Don't be a bitch, Sammy," Jess said and rubbed her hand over her eyes. "Not anymore than you can help, anyway."

"Yes, ma'am," Sam said and saluted her with a sharp little smirk. "I'll be your good little girlfriend, Jessica. I'm just the type every parent dreams of for their daughter."

"Seriously. Shut the fuck up and take me seriously." Jess knew that was as likely to happen as shitting rainbows or stars falling on their heads, so she didn't wait for it. Instead she cupped her hand over Sam's cheek and kissed her quiet.

Sam tasted better in the morning, toothpaste and mouthwash instead of beer. Her mouth was softer and pliant and when Jess kept kissing, she didn't fight it, just opened right up like she was starved for it.

"Let me," Jess breathed into her mouth. "You let him-- that guy at school, you let him and he was no one. Why not let me?"

Sam made a harsh noise. "Maybe you're not no one," she mumbled. But her hands rose up and stroked at Jess' back, at Jess' hair. "Anyway. There's a lot you don't know about me."

"I know enough," Jess said and when she said it, it felt true. Cross your heart and swear to die. Sam sighed softly. "I do," Jess repeated, louder, like she was arguing with someone.

"There's a demon under my skin," Sam said. Her eyes were slits of bright green, sharp as a cat's. "You don't know, Jess."

Jess shook her head, feeling the motion, the way her pony tail stung when it hit her cheek. "Show me, then," she said. "Show me what you've got. I want to see." She didn't wait for Sam to say anything else, didn't wait at all. Instead she put her hands on the top button of Sam's long flannel shirt and Sam went as still as if she'd been slapped. Her breath was sharp and thready, but she didn't move at all, just let her hands fall lax at her sides and stay there.

Jess' hands shook on the buttons. Clumsy as a kindergarten kid with her first pair of lace up shoes. One button after the other until she had them all down. Sam was wearing a loose black Bikini Kill T-shirt underneath, Kathleen Hanna's face like an outline of lipstick. Jess almost smiled, but managed to stifle it.

Sam raised her hands just enough to let Jess slide the flannel shirt off her shoulders and toss it onto the bed. Just enough and no more. There were scars all down her arms and even though Jess was expecting them, they still made her flinch. White and red, twisting the skin like it had bubbled and almost melted. A fire-- there had been a fire, so maybe that was exactly what happened.

Sam bit her lip and Jess kissed her there, mouth grazing over teeth. She tasted iron and salt under the mint of mouthwash. Then she pulled back. "Lift up your arms," she whispered, and Sam did it, stiff and clumsy, but she did. Jess tugged Sam's T-shirt out of her jeans and pulled it over her head, undressing her like a little kid.

Sam wasn't wearing a bra and-- crazy as it was-- Jess could barely see the scars at all even when they were there and stark, right in her face. She saw just the shape of her, of Sam. Smooth and pretty, soft skin with muscle underneath. High breasts and pink nipples, flush and full in the open air. Like an athlete, beautiful. Jess' stomach twisted and there was an ache between her legs, warm and weird, like only Sam had ever made her feel.

Jess didn't know what Sam saw in her face, but whatever it was made her whimper, soft, almost soundless. Her lips were red and parted and Jess kissed her again. "You're beautiful," she whispered.

"You're a nutcase," Sam whispered back, but she didn't fight it, didn't flinch away when Jess slid her mouth down over the marked and mauled skin of her collarbone and further down to taste her breasts and tongue those pretty pink nipples.

"I have no idea what I'm doing," Jess confessed, half laughing as she did it. Sam's answering grin was reward enough.

"We'll figure it out," Sam said. Jess felt warm and giddy, like the hope was rising up and choking her. Like they really would.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1697 words. This is a [girl Sam verse](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) ficlet. It's set after [A Fire of Unknown Origin](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/55117.html) and before [Fire Took My Baby Away](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/54348.html).

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Have Mercy (girl!Sam/Jess, girl!Sam/Ruby)** _

Title: Have Mercy  
Rated: Adult  
Pairing: girl!Sam/Jess, girl!Sam/Ruby  
Warning: Possession. Seriously dubious consent as related to said possession.  
Notes: 1697 words. This is a [girl Sam verse](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) ficlet. It's set after [A Fire of Unknown Origin](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/55117.html) and before [Fire Took My Baby Away](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/54348.html).  


 

Sam met the girl of her nightmares in a moldy old dorm room when she thought she was having sex with her girlfriend. It was good, really good... Jess' back was arched and she made the best sounds, deep and desperate, while her thighs rubbed against Sam's hair and her ankles pressed into Sam's sides.

"So pretty," Jess told her. "Sam, Sam, Sammy." She sounded like Jess, moved like her, everything perfect until she sank her nails into the soft skin of Sam's back and hissed her name while she came. It was a stupid thing, but that was nothing Jess had ever done before. Jess was weird about pain in sex, even the littlest bit.

Sam crawled up her body, pressure of bare skin on bare skin. Jess felt so warm and sweaty-slick against her. Jess turned so that her face was up close to Sam's, her breath warm on Sam's skin. She smiled, wide and deep. "Sammy," she said, and reached out like she was going to kiss Sam. In the dull light Sam caught something off in the color of her eyes. Too dark, like storm clouds.

Sam ducked so that Jess' lip caught her cheek instead of her mouth. She was pressed right up to Jess' ear, close enough to whisper. "Christos, Kyrie eleison. Domine, miserere."

Jess... the thing that looked like Jess... jerked back so fast Sam was almost pushed off the bed. Her eyes were midnight black, wiping out Jess' clear blue, and her hands were twisted up into fists. "He doesn't, you know," she said. "If he had even a little bit of mercy, neither of us would be here, Samantha Rogers."

Sam drew back, barely resisting the urge to grab at a sheet, a pillow, something to cover her bare ass. The demon-- this had to be a demon-- had already seen her as naked as she got. There was nothing else to reveal. The horror felt thick, choking thick and she wanted to curl up and cry, but she couldn't. This thing was in Jess.

"Who are you?" Sam said. Her voice came out soft at first, little girl wavering, but she pushed more force into as she went. She wasn't that little girl anymore, she would never be. "If you did something to my girl--"

The demon shrugged and gave a smirk that was nothing like Jess. "She's fine. I've only been riding her about an hour and most of that time she's been riding you. No time to damage the goods."

Sam gave a sharp, miserable laugh. "Fuck you," she said. "You think doing this to _her_ will make me do anything you want? You should ask my dear Dad what happens to people who cross me."

The demon tossed Jess' hair and showed her teeth. "I'm not people," she said. She sounded fierce, the way Jess did when she was sure of herself. "Look, I didn't hurt her. She's fine. I just wanted to get your attention."

Sam didn't jump her, but that was only because that was Jess in there, behind those black eyes. Jess who kept the local interest part of the paper for her between visits and collected folklore books with the pages dogeared to the stories she thought Sam would like. Jess who would be hurt if Sam attacked the thing wearing her body.

"You fucked me using her skin. You definitely have my attention," Sam ground out. "I hope you're happy." The demon shrugged Jess' shoulders, hiding its eyes behind Jess' hair. Sam could still smell it... Jess. Arousal and sweat, sex and satiation. It made her stomach turn and her heart twist into knots.

"It's nothing she wouldn't have done willingly," It said. "And you're lucky it was me and not any other creature from the pit, Sam. You don't want to know what they'd have done with her."

Sam scrubbed her knuckles against her cheeks. They felt itchy, longing to hit. "I don't want to know what you did with her. Tell me your name and what you want."

It made a face. "All I'm saying is that if I could do this, so could anyone else. The girl in your bed is really vulnerable, Sammy. You ever thought of that?"

"Your name," Sam spat. "Tell it to me, or I'm going to start reciting pater nosters and see how you like it."

The demon tilted Jess' head, looking at Sam out of Jess' eyes and shrugged. "No need to be violent. My name is Ruby. And I'm here because our lord and master asked me to check in on how his little girl was doing. You'll remember him. He owns your soul."

Sam made a noise that she hardly recognized even coming from her own throat. "Azazel," she whispered. "You're one of his." It wasn't a surprise, she just wanted it to be one. It was never going to be a surprise, not when she remembered what it felt like to be small, too small, kneeling on her bed next to her teddy bear while her Dad forced back her head so that a man with yellow eyes could get a better look.

"Well. Duh," Ruby said, suddenly all cheer again. "I'd figured that one was obvious genius. I'm going to be in big trouble when our lord and master finds out you spotted me too."

"I hope he puts you on the rack and makes you bleed," Sam hisses. "If you weren't in her I would, for this."

Ruby rolled her eyes, another Jess-like gesture of annoyance that made Sam want to scream and rip it out of her. "Maybe he will," she said. "But, hey, you'll have your turn soon enough." Then, before Sam had the chance to back away, she pushed herself up close, too close. Jess' hard nipples pressed against Sam's shoulder and Jess' soft tongue brushed over her earlobe. Sam could taste the salt she didn't want to be tears.

"I'll tell you a secret, Sammy," she whispered, low, thick with arousal. Jess' body ground up against her, slippery slick while Sam tasted salt on her cheeks and told herself she wasn't crying. "A good one. When you hang around with this body you think you love so much-- you're inviting us in. When you close your eyes and lay down next to her, you're bringing us closer. We like to have the chance to touch."

Sam made a sound, animal wild and jerked back, fist stuffed into her mouth. Ruby looked her right in the eyes and smiled. "Believe it or not, I'm on your side, Sam," she said. "Not too many of us would tell you this. Not too many of us would be honest with you."

"Get out of her," Sam shouted, hardly realizing she was until someone banged a book against one of the thin walls. "Out! Get out!"

Ruby barely seemed to hear it. "I'm serious here, Sam. If I were you, I'd think about this-- think long and hard about staying away from pretty little Jessica until you come up with a plan to keep the bad, bad demons out of her. I mean, you don't even know how to get rid of me, do you?"

"You're wrong," Sam whispered. "The last one. You're wrong." She pressed her fingers to her face, tracing out the trail of tears. Her dad used to make her cry like this. No one else, never. "Domine, miserere," she murmured, low and fast, under her breath. "In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. The river of life, rising from the throne of God and of the Lamb. You, too, are clean." Her tears stung as she spoke. The words stung, just a little, a low burn in the pit of her stomach. Just hard enough to let her know it worked.

Ruby stared at her. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Hurting you," Sam said and finally smiled. Then she reached out, fast as she could and pushed Jess down with her tear stained fingers. Ruby flinched and her skin smoked at the touch. "Out, get out," Sam hissed and pressed her cheek to Ruby's, hearing the sizzle of steam on skin. It hurt, it hurt her too, but that just made the tears come faster, thick and fierce.

Ruby made a harsh choking noise, the sound sickening out of Jess' body, and then the room filled with smoke. Sam let herself go limp, still clinging hard to Jess... it had to be Jess now, it had to be.

She couldn't do anything but shake until there was a hand in her hair, slow and tentative. Jess' hand, gentle like only Jess was. "Sammy?" she whispered. "Are you okay? What happened, did you have another nightmare?"

Sam hiccuped and tried to make herself stop crying, but it wasn't half as easy as starting. "Christos," she mumbled, low as she could, but Jess didn't seem to notice. "Yeah," she said, louder. "I'm sorry. I woke you up, huh?"

Jess pressed a kiss on Sam's forehead and Sam managed not to shudder. It was really her, after all. Nothing to be scared of. Nothing to worry about... not until the next time.

Jess fell asleep rocking Sam and stroking her hair with light, soothing motions. Sam couldn't sleep, not with Ruby's voice in her ear, telling her about next time. Next time and next time and next time, when it would all be Sam's fault.  
An hour before dawn, wide awake, Sam crawled out of Jess' arms and grabbed a notepad and pen from the desk. She left a quick note scrawled across it, tore it off and left it to rest on Jess' pillow before she grabbed her duffel bag from it's corner resting space.

_Went to see a man about a book,_ the note said. _Sorry for short notice. Be back when I've got it. -- S_

There had to be a way to keep the demons out. And Sam, Sam was going to find it. And then she'd make them all sorry. All of them.


	3. Fire Took My Baby Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Decades after his mother and baby sister died in a fire of demonic origin Dean Winchester picks up a hitchhiker off the interstate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to [](http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/profile)[**giandujakiss**](http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/) for the beta and to everyone who encouraged me for the tolerance.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: Fire Took My Baby Away (Dean/Girl!Sam)** _

Title: Fire Took My Baby Away  
Author: [](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/profile)[**ninhursag**](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: Adult  
Pairing: Dean/ girl!Sam  
Summary: Decades after his mother and baby sister died in a fire of demonic origin Dean Winchester picks up a hitchhiker off the interstate.   
Warnings: It's like a game of stack the cliches. Gender!swap, separated young hooker fic, to be exact. There are definitely scenes that will disturb some people.  
Notes: Thanks to [](http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/profile)[**giandujakiss**](http://giandujakiss.livejournal.com/) for the beta and to everyone who encouraged me for the tolerance.

Dean slows down before he even sees the girl trudging past the off ramp onto the interstate. It's pure instinct that has him easing on the brakes and sliding into the right lane. He's already pulling over even before he can tell quite what she looks like-- his instincts are good, always have been. He's not worried.

He whistles when he sees the girl, he can't help it. She's tall, with legs up to heaven, even taller than his usual. If she were in heels instead of hard soled combat boots she might be taller than him. Her face isn't drop dead gorgeous, but her features are even and regular, she's got smooth skin under a layer of dust and a sweet little upturned nose with eyes a muddy shade of hazel. She's probably got a great figure too, with those fine long legs, but he can't tell under the layers of shirts and the thick gray hoody she's got hiding everything.

Those hazel eyes narrow when he idles the car up next to her and her hands are fisted, loose and ready at her sides. For some reason that just makes Dean want to smile. "Need a ride, baby?" he asks and he lets that smile loose to do its work.

Her eyes roll up. "No, I'm on the fucking off ramp of a major highway with a duffel bag because I just _love_ to walk."

Dean's laughing before he even processes the words. Her mouth quirks, showing off the edge of white teeth, like she's barely suppressing a laugh of her own.

"Okay, where you headed?" he asks. He's supposed to be meeting Dad in Cali in forty eight hours, but for some reason he thinks he might be a couple of hours late just this once. It's not like Dad seemed to think anything was about to pop anytime soon last time he talked to Dean and this girl... well, she could pop soon.

The girl flicks her hair out of her eyes and gives him a long, steady look. "West," she says. "I'm going to Palo Alto. In California."

Dean's eyebrows both go up, because there's no way he's quite this lucky. Palo Alto was apparently ground zero for all the weirdo signs and electrical disturbances Dad had been muttering about on the phone. "Funny thing, me too."

The girl frowns and peers at him one more time. Up close Dean can see her knuckles are white and her fingers twisted together. She's younger than he thought at first too, or maybe it's just the lack of makeup and the messy little girl pony tail that make him think so.

Her next words kill the innocent thing, though. "I don't have money for gas," she says after a long pause. "I'll take it out in trade, though, if that's what you want. Just once, unless you pay me more than just a ride. And just you, none of your buddies. With condoms all around."

Dean has to suppress a spit take. It's not that weird. Not nearly the first time he got propositioned with something like this, couldn't be with the roadhouses and dives he crashes by and the amount of miles he's logged. It's just that she's really damned young up close. "How old are you?" he asks, tongue moving before it stops to consult his brain.

She clicks her tongue and glares at him. "Eighteen," she spits, narrow contempt in the twist of her wrist. "Yup, I'm eighteen and fuck if I haven't been admitted full ride to an _awesome_ college. It's just a matter of getting there, wanna help me out?"

"You could at least try to lie better than that and then I can pretend to believe you," Dean mutters. She snorts in response, but the white knuckle tightness of her hands loosens a little.

"Look," she says, sharp and steady. "You going to give me a ride or do I need to keep waiting for the next guy? You'll regret passing this up if you leave me here, I'm actually pretty good." Her hands stray to the hem of her hoody, like if he gave her the nod she might flash him the goods.

Dean has the vague idea that maybe, possibly, he should actually leave her and go. There are about a billion and one reasons this is a bad plan, and Dad would so kick his ass if he were here. But even as the thought hits him, he knows he won't, just like he knew he was going pull over before he even really saw her trudging down the road.

"What's your name?" he asks instead. "And don't say something lame like 'whatever you want it to be'."

"I wasn't going to. Bossy," she says, but her mouth quirks again. "It's Sam. Not Samantha, Sam. So do I get a ride, or what?"

"Well, it ain't like I get many offers as awesome as this. Hop in, Sammy-not-Samantha," Dean says and pops open the lock for her. He doesn't say that Samantha was his sister's name-- he doesn't see how that makes a difference now. She tosses her duffel in the back and clambers in after it.

"Just _Sam_," she says, mouth mulish and set a few seconds later. He doesn't miss that she saves that attitude for when he's pulled back onto the road and hit the gas.

"Sure, Sammy." Dean laughs and figures she's going to be fun, but she just gives him a long hairy eyeball and then pulls a book out of the pocket of her hoody and flips it open. He blinks at her from the driver's side, but she just bends her head over it, her hair flopping down to cover her cheeks and hide her face.

He gives it five minutes, but she just stares down, turning pages periodically. "What are you reading?" he finally tries.

She doesn't look up. "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus," she says into the paper. "And if you want a book report, that'll cost you extra too. You might as well save your cash for blowjobs or something, it's a better deal."

Dean can't help laughing, louder than he has in a long, long time. She still doesn't look up, but when he turns on the tape deck and plays some Zeppelin her mouth quirks into a smile and her fingers tap along to the drum riffs.

\  
Dean's not a total asshole no matter what his tenth grade teacher called him and he's not actually sure that Sam's really eighteen or that sleeping with her would be cool even if she was. He's already practicing letting her know that she doesn't need to fuck him or anything (not that she's not pretty. Not that he doesn't-- yeah.)

He never gets the chance to get the words out.

They're barely inside the door of a motel room just off the interstate when Sam jumps him. She's heavier than Dean expected, especially given that the only softness he can feel through the layers of cloth is the slight curve of breasts pressing against his chest. Everything else is angles and sharpness.

She doesn't kiss him, she just pushes in close and slides her hand right down his pants like she's been invited. She smells stale and dusty up close, with just the faintest undertone of girly shampoo under sweat. Dean's body comes on like the scent and feel of her threw a switch in his guts.

Dean's had girls-- snotty, elegant ones looking for rough trade, dolled up chicks in leather and lace and perfume climbing on his lap, everything in between and fuck if he didn't love it-- but he never got hard this fast. It's like the smell of her, the angles of bone and blood are hardwired right into him. Like he recognizes her. She grins, gamine-wild, at the attention her touch brings and that just makes his dick twitch harder. He lets his head slide back against the wall and groans.

When she talks, though, she ruins it. "God, you're a big boy, aren't you?" she croons, but her voice is tight and on the bleeding edge of sarcasm, like she learned how to talk dirty from porn and not the good kind.

"Look," Dean says and he catches her by the shoulders, pulling her off. He can feel the bones of her shoulders poking out into his hands right through the layers of cloth between them. "You don't want to do this."

Her eyes roll, curling her lashes. The gesture is so familiar it hurts, even though Dean's never seen her before today. He knows, somehow. He knows she's right on the bleeding edge now. "Thanks for telling me that. I'd never have been able to figure out what I want without you to instruct me, oh studly driver of rust bucket American car."

The insult to his car short circuits his brain just long enough to make his tongue really stupid. "Fuck you, she costs more than you do."

Sam's eyebrows go up and she smiles, but it's a blank, bland smile, no teeth to it at all and Dean knows without being told that it's all wrong. She's supposed to get mad. He's fucking mad at himself for saying that. "I know," she says. "What, you think that hurts my feelings? Now, come on, I know you're not too limp dicked to fuck, what's your problem?"

Her hands are on the hem of her hoody, toying with the fabric, but she doesn't move to take it off or anything, just stares him down. "I'm not this guy," Dean says, like that explains half of it. Like that explains why his dick is still pressed up hard to the zipper of his jeans as if she's still got her hands all over it. "I don't do this."

"Why? You got a girlfriend, Morality Boy?" Sam asks, light and weirdly casual sounding. Like she's about two seconds from dropping a bomb, verbal or physical. He doesn't know which yet, but he can guess. "You got religion? Or are you just looking for something to act like a giant freak about?"

"Sam--"

"Don't say my name like you know me. I'll show you something to freak about." She turns away from him, showing him her back. The layers of cloth hang loose on her, like she's really skinny underneath. Dean doesn't mean to touch, but the next thing he knows his hand is on her back. Slow and careful, like he's trying to pet a feral cat that's just as likely to take his hand off as arch into it. She shudders under his touch and he can feel the bones of her spine.

"You shouldn't push this freak thing," he says, probably sounding as lame as he feels. He can hear the huff of her breath. "Come on, you're a gorgeous girl. Any guy would be really lucky, me included. I just don't wanna take advantage."

She spins around, flinching out of his grip. Her eyes are sharp and green from this angle. "You think you're such a do gooder, huh? Gorgeous?" she spits. "Are you going to save me? Wanna see what you're saving before you make any commitments?"

"Look, all I'm saying is I'll take you to California and you don't owe me anything."

"Shut up." She gives him the lopsided half shark smile instead of the bland one and her hands tighten on her hoody. She pulls it off in one swift gesture and throws it in his face before he realizes she's doing it.

It smells like her, like miles of hard road and girl and sweetness that's completely unexpected. He breathes it in for just a second, just stands there. When he pulls it off his face she's already taking off her bra.

Dean's seen a lot of awful things in his life, but this is like someone shoved a pike into the softest part of his belly. There are scars, smooth and shiny pink, all over her skin. Gut-twisting scars, like they were all that was left of vicious and deep wounds, third degree burns or worse. Like someone had held her right up to a fire and kept her there when she tried to pull away.

In his sickest nightmare, he didn't want to think about how much that must have hurt.

Her face, so smooth and young under the dirt, should have been totally incongruous in comparison. Should have been, but the lines of her body were smooth and elegant, if too thin. Her mouth was curled into a sneer and he had a bursting impulse to lean in and kiss it away.

"Now you see why your rust bucket is worth more than me," she says and shrugs her shoulders. "Are you going to ask me what happened, Do Gooder?"

"Are you going to tell me?" Dean says, trying for the same bland tone as hers and faltering.

She shrugs, like she's already tuning him out. Like she's told her story so many times she's stopped expecting it to matter. "My mom died in a fire when I was five. I lived. Shit happens and hey, it's not like she was my real mom, anyway. But see, now you have a really good reason not to want to fuck me. Unless you're some kind of fetish freak."

"You're beautiful," Dean says, without thinking about it. It just seems like it should be obvious and everything else is too much to process.

She goes still, just for a second. Her eyes are all iris, hazel, green and blue mixed in, staring at him. "Oh," she says and then bites her lip. "Oh. You _are_ a fetish freak. Well, I guess it's your lucky day!"

"Yeah," Dean says. "It is." He wasn't going to touch her at all, but he isn't thinking about wasn't or doesn't when he leans over and just a little bit down and presses his mouth to hers. She tastes sour and sweet. Soft mouth, dry, chapped lips. They part for him easily.

He can feel the press of cloth between them when he slips closer. Her clothes are a tight, sharp bundle digging into his chest. Her arms are narrow and skinny, all elbows and clinging skin.

She backs off first this time. Presses her hand to her mouth and holds it there, just shaking her head, like things had spun out of her control too. "I don't kiss men," she mumbles through her fingers. "I'm going to take a shower."

She's grabbed her things from him and slammed the bathroom door shut before Dean has a chance to think of something to say. He sits down at the edge of the bed by the door while the water starts. It runs for a long, long time, probably long enough to use up every bit of hot water in the building and then some. It runs a little longer.

Dean stares down at his palms and listens to the blasting of water until it finally sputters to a close. A few minutes later she steps out of the bathroom behind a burst of steam. There's a towel wrapped just over her breasts, but the knotted scars are still visible down her shoulders and her right arm.

"So," she says and then stops, just watching him.

He sighs and stares at the ugly print of the bedspread under his ass. Like he hasn't already got the pattern memorized. "Look, you don't need to sleep with me," he says, soft, trying for earnest. It's weird, he's telling the truth and he barely believes himself. "I'm going to take you to Palo Alto anyway."

"Oh fuck you," Sam says. She climbs into the inside bed on the side furthest away from him anyway, just pausing at her bag to grab the book laying on top and then pulling the covers up all the way to her neck. Still, she stops and looks at him from over the top of the book. "What's your name, anyway?"

Dean pauses. He doesn't want to laugh, exactly, but he can't help it. It bursts out of him like a blister cracking. Giggles and puss. Sam glares at him and that sort of helps him calm down, enough to get it out anyway. "Dean Winchester. You know, the guy who's dick you had your hand on just now?"

Sam actually flushes. It's visible even under her tan, pink and weirdly sweet, and for some reason that's enough to make Dean's dick remember that yes, she had her hand there, and no, she didn't exactly finish him off. All she says is, "Yeah? Well that sounds like a fake name to me." She waits for a beat, like she expects Dean to say something.

He'd hate to disappoint her. "Just go to sleep," he says. She stares at him for a long moment and then shrugs, puts her book face down on the nightstand and flips out the light.

Dean climbs under the covers still wearing most of his clothes and listens to her breathe for a long time. If she's actually asleep when he finally manages to close his eyes, she has him fooled.

He dreams of Sam, like he didn't get enough of her awake. She's sweeter in the dream though-- her mouth, wide and smiling, brighter than she ever actually had. Her arms are bare and unblemished and she's wearing a short skirt that swirls around her thighs.

"Dean," dream Sam whispers to him. "I think I love you." She's standing next to him, hands stuffed in her pockets, mouth curled way up. She tilts her head up and he tilts his down, and they're kissing and she's sweet, so sweet.

Dean dreams of her mouth all over him, his mouth, sliding down his hips. Hot on his dick, tight lips and warm throat, talented and steady. He's not as surprised as he should be when he wakes up, hips arched up and fly all the way down, with her between his legs. She's real and lithe, lips red around his cock, breasts shifting with his thrusts. She smells like cheap motel soap and him.

Just seeing her like that is enough to make him gasp, make him come like his brains are shooting out of the tip of his dick. She grins around him and her throat works, swallowing like he's delicious. She's still smirking when she climbs off of him and wipes her mouth with the back of her palm.

"There," she says. "Now we're even."

Dean groans and turns his face into his pillow and doesn't say anything at all. He wants to follow her, he does, but when he peers at her out of the corner of his eye she's back in her own bed, covers tucked up to her chin in a way that makes her look innocent. Inviolate.

\

They meet up with a spirit in a third-rate, all but empty motel right over the Nevada state line. Dean hadn't even been planning a hunt, not with Dad waiting, definitely not with Sam along for the ride. Not planning was probably what had made the perverse ass ghost show up-- just to fuck with him. Dean was having that kind of day.

The thing is pale, black eyed and webfingered. When it was alive, it was probably a little boy, but now it's just outrage in a boy-like shape. It's not what wakes Dean up, the screaming is what does that, a child's howling voice.

Sam is already on her feet on the other side of the room, tugging her boots on and stumbling toward the window in the same motion. She stops abruptly, just for a moment, palms pressed against the glass, mouth hanging open. Dean's behind her a second later when he sees it.

The spirit's got a kid by the hair, a yellow haired little girl, and she's the one that's screaming, kicking out as she's dragged toward the swimming pool. Sam spins around and meets Dean's eyes. He's expecting fear, horror, shock. Something like the usual response of a civilian seeing a spirit. Not raw determination and the thin set mouth.

"I don't know what that is, but it's not killing that kid," she says and shoves past him, like she's going to take it on with her bare hands, spirit or not.

Dean catches her by the arm. "I know what it is," he says, steady, willing her to believe him. This isn't like the one other girl he'd tried to tell, at least. She just _saw_ it, Sam will know he isn't crazy, she has to. "It's a spirit. It hates salt and I have a shot gun full of salt shells."

Sam's mouth purses and it looks like she's going to say something but then that little girl screams again and Dean hops over to his bag and grabs the shotgun. He doesn't look behind him, just barrels out the door toward the sound of wailing.

He gets off the first shot easily enough and the spirit flickers and blinks out of existence. The kid it was dragging falls out of its grip with another shriek, headlong into the pool. Less than a second and it's obvious she can't swim or she's just too scared to do it, the thrashing and gasping are the only things Dean hears.

He doesn't hesitate, he jumps right in after her, diving to catch her and hold her up out of the water. "Shh," he says, even though he doesn't think she can hear him. "I've got you, kiddo. I've got you." Her small body keeps flailing, ridiculously strong for something so slight, but he doesn't lose his grip.

He's got a sense memory of another little girl, a lot smaller than this one. Sweet, the smell of baby powder. His mom's arms around him, hugging him from behind, saying, "Kiss your sister goodnight, Dean." He didn't save that girl but he can save this one.

He's towing her out of the pool before he realizes just how badly he miscalculated this one. The spirit is waiting for them, a twisted smirk on its small face. It probably drowned in this exact pool, that's how blue-tinged its skin is.

It reaches out and down, and Dean can't even see his shot gun from here, never mind get out of the water and over to it before this thing bears down on him. All he can think is that this is one of the stupidest things he's ever done and his Dad would just about kill him if he got the chance. If this thing isn't about to do it for him. One little girl in danger and Dean's going to die saving her.

Except he won't save her. The little girl is going to die too, he can hear her sputtering water and crying in his arms. "It's okay," he whispers to her, even if it isn't, even if the spirit is twitching closer and closer.

The last thing Dean expects to hear is the sharp retort of the shotgun. The salt round slams into the spirit just before it reaches him and the thing scatters into air and fragments. Sam is standing just behind it, wincing, like she hadn't expected the thing to have near that much kick.

"Ow," she whispers, rubbing her arm. Then she glares right at him, like the most beautiful thing Dean has ever seen in his life. "Get that kid out of there before that... _that_ comes back." Dean just nods. No way he's waiting for an engraved invitation.

Sam hands him the shotgun as soon as he's out of the water and steady on his feet. The little girl is still crying, but she blinks and her sobs get quieter when Sam kneels down next to her and looks her dead in the eye.

"Your mom and dad here, sweetie?" Sam asks softly, pushing the girl's sopping hair out of her face with hands that are surprisingly tender. Dean bites his lip. It's a good question-- all this screaming and no one's coming running. None of the motel room doors are even open.

The little girl frowns, expression gone solemn. "My mom's dead," she whispers. Her voice is hoarse from the screaming and she shivers like it's cold. Sam wraps an arm around her and pulls her in. "My dad's drunk. He doesn't know where I am."

Over the little girl's shoulder Sam's expression is bleak, tight. "I know," she whispers. "I know."

Dean looks away and tries not to think about this at all. The spirit they can do something about. A little research and he'll find it, burn its bones wherever they are. The kid-- there's nothing. There's just nothing. Sam was probably a little girl just like this one, he can picture that so easily. Probably no one did anything for her either.

He doesn't ask and she doesn't offer, he just hustles them all back into their motel room and makes the salt lines good and thick while Sam wraps the girl in dry towels and talks to her in a soft, gentle tone that's still so sad Dean isn't sure he ever wanted to hear it.

"Lindsey's grandma lives one town over," Sam finally says when it's starting to get light and Dean pronounces a renewed spirit attack unlikely in the extreme. "She likes her grandma. We can take her there. I mean-- you've got the car, but if you don't want to I can--"

"Shut up," Dean says without thinking about it. "Fucking course we're taking her there."

Sam doesn't say anything, just nods. The kid clings to her the whole way over, right up until Sam carries her out of the car and to her grandmother's house. Dean has no idea what Sam says to the old lady, he doesn't get out of the car and he can just see them in the threshold from the mirror but the woman keeps nodding and it ends with her giving Sam a tight, wide hug.

When she comes back to the car Sam's expression is less bleak and more bemused, like even she's not sure what happened and how it ended in hugging. She doesn't say anything though. She just buckles on her seat belt and then looks at Dean.

"That thing in the pool. Talk to me about that thing," she says, with a calm steadiness that's about the best reaction to the supernatural Dean's ever seen.

Dean just nods and begins a slow, careful explanation. He's not surprised that she takes that really well too. More surprised when she comes with him to the library and proves to be ridiculously good at filtering through old microfilm and card catalogs to find the news stories about neglected children drowning in that motel pool running back decades, all the way to 1979 when one little boy fell in after getting his ass kicked by his dad.

"You're good at this research shit," Dean says when she finally prints out the location of the cemetery where they buried the kid. "Are you actually going to college? For real?" He'd just figured she was fucking with him, but he'd met way too many actual college kids a thousand times less sharp.

Sam actually laughs and rolls her eyes. "Nah. I've got other things on my mind."

"Well, you're smart enough," Dean says, even though he never saw the point of college himself. Sam is smart enough, between this and her bedtime reading it's ridiculously obvious.

"Now you sound like my girlfriend," Sam mutters and shakes her head, but it's not in a mean way. What she actually said doesn't register with Dean, not for a long moment and then it leaves him blinking, confused.

"Your-- wait, what?" he finally sputters, like he just got a face full of ice water. Sam smirks and pulls out her wallet. The thing is almost empty, just a twenty and a small, square cut picture. The picture is what she holds up to him. The girl in it is a blonde, smiling and absolutely smoking, even if her prettiness is much more conventional than Sam's.

"Her name's Jessica," Sam says and tucks the picture away, safe in her wallet. "She's going to Stanford. You know, in Palo Alto."

Dean scratches the back of his neck just to do something with his hands. "But. I don't-- I mean."

Sam shrugs and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. "What? You think it's weird because I gave you a blow job?"

"Yeah. Maybe," Dean mutters. "Don't you?"

Sam settles back against her seat and tilts her chin toward him. "Maybe as far as I'm concerned guys don't count," she says after a moment of quiet. "I thought you were just a trick."

"What the hell does 'maybe' mean?" Dean demands before he really thinks about it. "It doesn't count if you don't get off on it or what? Does Jessica think that's cool?"

Sam looks him in the eye, steady and still. There's something really calm about her right in that second, really centered. "I didn't say I didn't--" She stops mid-sentence, breathes and then goes on. "Jess doesn't know and she won't know. As for 'maybe'-- right now _I_ honestly don't know," she says. She looks like there's something else she's going to say but she doesn't, just watches him for a long time and then looks away again.

\

Dad calls him about five minutes after he salts and burns the bones. Sam's watching, sitting on a gravestone, long legs swinging unsteadily.

"Where the hell are you?" Dad's voice sounds jittery on the line and that's enough to make Dean's fingers twitch even as the corpse lights up below his feet. "I needed you here yesterday, Dean."

"I ran into a loose spirit. It was drowning kids in a swimming pool," Dean says, quick as he can, before Dad gets a chance to really push it. He hears the tight breathing on the other end, but that's all.

"Well, when can I expect you?" Dad finally asks and Dean breathes out. Good, not going to be a thing, at least not yet. "I think I have a pretty good idea what the omens are pointing to and it's getting worse real fast."

"What's going on?" Dean asks. "I know you said a demon, but those are--"

Dad makes an impatient noise, cutting Dean right off. "Son," he says. "I don't have time to chatter on the phone with you. This thing-- I'm pretty sure we're hot on the trail of the thing that killed your mother and sister."

Dean can't talk at all for a second and there's a pause over the phone. "Get here," Dad says and then the line clicks off.

When he shoves the phone into his pocket Sam is staring at him, wide eyed, like she's never seen him before. Her face is pale and smooth, making her look stupidly young. "Dean," she whispers. "Did you say... did I hear you say there was a demon?"

Dean takes a quick step toward her. It's pure impulse, like jumping into the pool after that screaming little girl. He only stops when he's in arm reach and she flinches, like she thinks he's going to smack her one in the face. He tries to keep his voice gentle when he asks her, "What do you know? What do you know about demons?"

"I-- demons. I thought you wouldn't believe me," Sam says. Her arms are wrapped around her chest and up close there's a line between her eyebrows, tight and wound up. "Normally, you talk about demons and the next thing they're calling the men in white coats," she says. "They really cramp my style and it's not like they're going to be able to keep me in lock down for very long unless they can prove I'm a danger to myself or others."

"Men in white coats? Oh, come on, you just helped me hunt down a ghost and you thought that? Of course I'd believe you," Dean offers. He lays his palms between them, open and spread like an offering. "If it's about demons, you can tell me. I... tell me."

She snorts. Dean's palms close up tight on pure reflex and he stares at her. Sam looks tired, a little rueful with her mouth quirked into a sideways smile. She doesn't wait for him to say anything else, offer her anything else. "I-- What do you know about deals with demons?"

"I've heard stories," Dean says. He plays calm, but the hair on the back of his neck is prickling and he's not sure he wants to know where the story he's going to hear is going. "Devil at the crossroads, right? Gives you power in exchange for your soul?"

Sam shrugs. She meets his eyes head on. She still looks mostly tired, mostly sad. "You help people, right? That's why you have all that ghost hunting shit in your bag. You help people like that kid. Like me."

Dean nods unsteadily. But-- "I've never heard of anything that could help someone that sold their soul. Is that what you did?"

She shakes her head once, tightly. Dean breathes out, relief loosening him up until she opens her mouth and talks again. "My dad did it," she says. Her hands are white knuckled, clutching the grave stone underneath her, but her face is still calm. "He sold everything else of mine first. And then he met this... this thing. It had red eyes. It wanted me and he--" She stops, sucks in a breath and stares at Dean like she has no idea where he came from. "So can you help me? The fucker's supposed to come to collect in less than a year and I'm trying to find out if there's something I can do about it. I've been trying."

Dean blinks. She's not crying, just looking at him, rocking back and forth where she's sitting. "I've heard of demons buying souls. I've never heard of a demon being able to buy someone else's soul, though, not if they weren't doing the selling," he finally says after a long second to scratch his head. "Are you sure?"

Sam stares at him unblinking. "You do believe me," she says, just when the staring's about to get really creepy. "I know you said-- but you believe me, right?"

Dean bites his lower lip, feeling the flesh curl under teeth. "Are you sure it's your soul he sold? I mean--"

"I'm sure. I'd know, I-- it kissed me. It--" Sam stops and shakes her head. Her hair's come loose and it's messy, like a halo around her head. "You can save a baby's soul with a baptism, right? If you can save it, you can sell it and I think that's what happened to me."

"Sam--"

She talks right over him, fast and loud, like she has to do it. "If I'm wrong, well, kickass. But if I'm right, I'm not gonna sit still for it, you know?"

"Why are you going to Palo Alto? Your girlfriend--"

"I've been traveling, trying to find out whatever I can, but I hit a dead end. I think if I just-- I mean, Jess gets me access to the stacks at the libraries at Stanford, and that's a good starting point for a lot of things," Sam says. She bites her lip and looks at Dean. "She doesn't know, though. I never told her." Sam's expression turns rueful again. "It's the men in white coats thing, you know?"

Dean closes his eyes and remembers the look on Cassie's face when he told her the truth and nothing but the truth. "Yeah," he mutters. "I know."

"Anyway," Sam says softly. She kicks out at the turf under her feet, spreading dust. "I miss her. If I'm running out of time I need to be next to her while I can."

Dean scrubs his palm over his face and then looks at Sam. She looks about twelve in her loose fitting layers of shirts. White faced and gawky, all height and bones. Like a little girl. Like his sister might have looked if she ever got this old.

"You're not running out of time," Dean says. He's surprised by how steady and sure he sounds, way more than he feels. "You're not, Sammy. I'm going to help you, I swear."

"My name's really not Sammy, you know that, right?" she says but her mouth curves upward and there's a gleam of something in her eyes like maybe she believes him. "I mean, that's an awfully big thing to be promising someone you don't even know."

"Yeah? So?" Dean says. He puts his hands over Sam's, enveloping her long, chilled fingers in his broader ones. She stiffens for a second, then relaxes, letting him knit their hands together.

"You know I'm in love with someone else, right?" she asks.

Dean shrugs, slumping with his shoulders. "Yeah," he says, like he can't just about imagine the taste of her, how good she is. "So let's get you back to her." He doesn't let go of Sam's hand though, not all the way back to Impala and she doesn't pull away either.

He drives flat out, foot on the gas most of the way through Nevada, stopping for piss breaks and not much else. Sam keeps her nose in a book most of the way. It's a thick looking monster, like something out of old Bobby Singer's library on demonology, but Sam makes noises like it's the most fascinating thing in the universe.

A few hours in she kicks off her boots and puts her bare stocking feet on the dash, stretching out her long legs. Dean doesn't protest, just hums along to the Metallica pouring out of tape deck and gives her sidelong glances, feeling warm and ridiculous every time he sees her there, flipping pages and chewing on a pen cap like it was manna and she was starving.

When they finally hit Palo Alto, Sam directs him to a mildly run down looking block of buildings. Dean peers out at them dubiously. "Looks like a dump," he mutters.

"A dump with rent like you would not fucking believe," Sam says and laughs. She twists around and half climbs over the seat to grab her duffel out of the back. Dean stares at the thin strip of skin revealed when her shirt hikes up, golden where the scars haven't left it white.

Sam smiles at him when she catches him looking. "Come in with me and meet Jess?" she offers.

Dean looks away, rubbing his palm over his scalp. "Nah," he says, eyes pointed right at the steering wheel. "There'll be time for that. I gotta get to my dad, figure out what he's hunting. It's demonic shit so-- you know, maybe it'll help us get a line on your problem too."

Sam snorts. "So, what, the demons all know each other or something?"

Dean laughs. "Fuck me if I know. Look, just go in, kiss your girlfriend. Don't tell her you've been sleeping with strange men."

Sam smacks him lightly on the wrist. "She wouldn't care anyway. She's used to me."

Dean doesn't say anything, but he does catch Sam's hand in his. She lets him, let's him hold it. On a crazy impulse, Dean lifts her hand to his lips and brushes a kiss against the bruised, scarred knuckles. Sam sucks in an audible breath and doesn't pull away. When Dean looks up to meet her eyes they're wide, bright and nearly green in the full sunlight.

"I'll see you soon," he promises. Sam swallows visibly and tugs her hand loose. She swings her duffel over her shoulder and just about runs out of the car and into the house without turning around.

Dean watches her go in, watches the door slam shut behind her and then lets his head fall down to press against the steering wheel. His car still smelled like motel soap and her. His guts hurt. His dick hurts. He doesn't know what to do except sit tight where he is and just... something.

He's just about to restart the car and get out of there when he looks up at the building and watches the lights flicker and dim, brighten and flicker again. Like a power surge. He blinks. The lights flicker again.

In the back of his mind he can hear his Dad, sharp and serious, telling him, "Dean, electrical disturbances are one of the first signs of supernatural activity. Not just spirits. Demonic activity." He can hear his Dad, but Dean's already moving, already at the door, lockpicks pulled out of the cuff in his jeans where he keeps them.

He pounds through the door and into Sam's girl's apartment just in time to see flames blossom out from the ceiling. He has a vague impression of a girl with long blonde hair and a mouth torn into a silent scream. Girl on the ceiling, like before, like Dean's mom. Like before.

But Sam's the one he sees, Sam's the one he focuses on. Her hands are pressed to her mouth and she's reaching out like she's going to climb into the fire and pull that girl loose. She fights him when he grabs her, fights like a trapped animal, all teeth and nails and viciousness, drawing blood everywhere she can. She fights hard and dirty and only the fact he's just as desperate as she is lets him keep his grip when she sinks her teeth into his shoulder.

"Sam," he hisses into her ear. "Sammy, it's okay, it's okay, calm down. It's okay."

He's not sure if it's the tone or the heat from the fast spreading fire or something else, but she slumps in his arms, all the fight gone out of her. He carries her outside, loose over his shoulder. She'd be a rag doll except for the way she's clinging to his arms, tight enough that there will be a circle of bruises there to match the other marks she gave him, he can feel it already.

When he sets her on her feet by the passenger door of the Impala she just stares at him, wide eyed, all pupil. There's soot on her face. He wants to brush it off with his thumbs but she flinches back from his hands.

"My mom," she whispers. "She died like my mom, Dean. Her hair was on fire, just like my mom's. I was a little kid, but I remember."

Dean can taste blood and iron on his lip. "My mom too," he admits in a whisper no louder than Sam's. "When I was four. My mom and sister, died. They said it was an electrical fire, but my dad knew it wasn't. I saw it, though. I saw it too."

Sam blinks at him. "When it happened, my dad said it was my fault because I wasn't their real kid. My real parents didn't want me."

"That's psycho," Dean hisses. He's not sure he hates anyone as much as the idea of Sam's father. Maybe the thing that killed his mom and his baby sister. Maybe.

Sam stares for a moment longer. She's still shaking visibly, but her voice is steady, solid. "You think it was the same thing that did it? To them, to our Moms? To Jess?"

"Probably," Dean doesn't hesitate before saying. "My Dad's been tracking it for a long time, whatever it is. He-- he'll know."

"It," Sam looks like she's tasting the word, pondering it. "A demon?" It's obvious when she says it out loud, really, stupidly obvious, but Dean only shrugs. It makes sense. A demon killed his mom.

"Probably," he whispers.

She steadies out, the trembling easing and then she nods. "We'll kill it. Even if I never get my soul back, I don't care. I've got a year. More than. Just as long as I get to kill it."

"Shut up." Dean barely recognizes the hiss as his own. "I promised I was going to save you, and I will."

Sam just stares at him, but when he leans in close and tugs his arms around her she doesn't move away. "Okay," she whispers. "Let's go find your father. I doubt anything is going to be that easy."

When Sam goes, Dean follows her.


	4. I Will Always Be Hungry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A [girl!Sam verse](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) story, following immediately after [Fire Took My Baby Away](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/54348.html). Sam's secrets and a truly gruesome case complicate Sam and Dean's burgeoning partnership. This story would fit in where Wendigo is in the series timeline.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you [](http://samidha.livejournal.com/profile)[**samidha**](http://samidha.livejournal.com/) for the ultra-speedy beta! And thank you to everyone who listened to me whine pathetically about this story. It was slow going. Hope it's worth it ♥

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: I Will Always Be Hungry (girl!Sam/Dean)** _

nTitle: I Will Always Be Hungry  
Author: [](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/profile)[**ninhursag**](http://ninhursag.livejournal.com/)  
Rating: Adult (for violence more than sex)  
Pairing: girl!Sam/Dean  
Summary: A [girl!Sam verse](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) story, following immediately after [Fire Took My Baby Away](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/54348.html). Sam's secrets and a truly gruesome case complicate Sam and Dean's burgeoning partnership. This story would fit in where Wendigo is in the series timeline.   
Notes: Thank you [](http://samidha.livejournal.com/profile)[**samidha**](http://samidha.livejournal.com/) for the ultra-speedy beta! And thank you to everyone who listened to me whine pathetically about this story. It was slow going. Hope it's worth it ♥  


  
Dean doesn't know how he expects his Dad to react to Sam. John Winchester usually treats Dean's girlfriends— and there hadn't been many of those, mostly one night stands who didn't exactly need to be reacted to— with a kind of distant but seamless respect that Dean figured was a military thing. It was just Dad.

Sam's nothing like any of them were, though. She's as shaky as a newborn colt, soot from the fire still streaked across her pale face, but she's still there and beautiful as anything Dean's ever seen. She barely looks at him though, like she can't much care that he's even here. With Sam like this Dean can't worry too much about his Dad.

It turns out he doesn't have to. Dean doesn't expect anything from his Dad, but the last thing on the list was for him to be packed up and gone.

Dean can't do anything but glare at the neat, empty motel room while Sam blinks at him. "I thought you said your Dad wanted to meet up with you here," she mutters, but whatever it is she sees in his face, it keeps the edge off her tongue.

"He did say that," Dean says, but he's already scanning the room, looking for a clue, an idea, a plan. Something. He and his Dad had ways of getting each other messages. Clues and counter codes.

He finds it in the battered nightstand drawer. The Gideon bible inside is hollow and pops open when he touches it. Sam stands over his shoulder and gives a low whistle when Dean pulls a messy, leather bound journal out.

"Is that your father's? It looks like the kind of thing they find under the pillows of serial killers," Sam mutters. He pulls the journal away before she can reach for it.

"Glad you're feeling better," he spits. He stuffs the journal into his pocket, but he doesn't get the chance to grab the paper that slides out of the book before she's on the ground, grabbing at it and unfolding it.

"Huh," Sam says and stares down at the crumpled paper in her hand. "It looks like coordinates."

Dean grabs it back from her and stares at his dad's neat, choppy handwriting. Coordinates, yes, on top. On the bottom, there's a note, but if Sam read it she doesn't say a word about it.

_Dean,_ he sees, ink dug into cheap, brittle paper, and Dean feels his stomach plummet. _That girl you have with you looks like Mary. She looks like your mother. Watch out for her. This thing is just getting started and it can only get worse._

He crumbles the paper a little more and stuffs it into his pocket. "The coordinates-- that's where he'll be," he says out loud, firm and decisive when inside his guts are churning and his brain hurts. What the hell does that mean?

Sam's mouth quirks and she rubs her cheek, spreading the soot on her skin around a little bit more. Dean can't look at her for very long, not without seeing a burning woman on the ceiling, not without hearing her scream. It doesn't make her look like Mom, though, nothing like the mother Dean remembers. He won't see that in her face, won't see Mom when he looks at her.

"That's where he'll be?" she asks softly, too softly, almost sounding like a gentle thing. "If it gets me closer to the thing that killed Jess, that's where I'll be too." Her eyes are narrow and her knuckles are white under the bruises. Sam doesn't look like Mom, no matter what Dad said, not wearing that face. She looks like she could break the world. She looks like Dad.

"Yeah," Dean says. He wants to touch. He doesn't. "I'll be with you." He doesn't say, my sister's name was Samantha. His sister is dead, ashes and no matter how much this Sam looks like her, she's never coming back.

Sam doesn't say much of anything at all. When she's not looking, Dean calls his dad and gets sent directly to voicemail. _If this is an emergency, call my son Dean. He can help._ It feels like one more stupid lie.

They don't wait for Jess' funeral to leave town. Sam's mouth curls up when Dean suggests it and she says, "Her family always said I was going to get her in trouble and she should stay far the fuck away from me. Boy, were they right."

Dean just looks away. _I'm going to save you. We're going to find the thing that killed her and save you _, he doesn't say. Nothing he can say would be the right thing anyway.

\

If Sam sleeps more than twenty minutes in a stretch on the road Dean doesn't know about it. She jerks herself awake and makes the same low, muffled noise every time, like she's stifling a scream. Dean tries not to flinch, not to feel like he's somehow responsible.

When they get there the black circles under her eyes look carved in and her face is still pale and tight, but her hands are steady and she glares around like the woods have personally pissed her off.

"This," she says. "There's nothing here, Dean. Just trees and canyons. Doesn't seem like it's exactly demon central either."

"Dad sent me here," Dean says, because he doesn't have much else to say.

"Well then where is he?" Sam asks. She makes a face, all scrunched up and narrow-browed, like she's going to yell, but she just shakes her head instead and rubs her eyes. "What the hell good is this to me?"

"We'll find him," Dean says, but Sam stops looking at him.

They stop to use the bathrooms at the Blackwater Ridge Visitors Center but they don't find anything out of the ordinary, not there. When Dean comes out of the men's room, Sam's already standing in the middle of the hall waiting for him, staring at the flickering old television. It's turned to a local station, poor resolution makes it is look like it's broadcasting in blue and white, tuned to the breaking news.

The newscaster points to a screen and her perfectly collagen plumped lips are narrow and serious. "Police are stunned this afternoon as a Greyhound bus was pulled off the road by a mad man. Surviving passengers report that at 8:30 this morning, a still unidentified man climbed out of his seat and assaulted the passenger sleeping in the seat in front of him."

The lips purse and pout. "This mysterious killer allegedly bit through the man's neck. Passengers watched from outside the bus as he began to mutilate the body for the next twenty minutes before breaking out and disappearing into the woods. The following image was caught on a passenger's cell phone just hours ago."

Dean's mouth hangs open when the picture flash on the screen. Sam's spine goes visibly stiff, even under her layers of shirts. She doesn't turn to look at him but he can see her clench up. "What the fuck is that?" she demands. Dean blinks. It's got blood on its mouth, thick and gray, like it would be bright red if the show were coming over in color. Its skin is shriveled and its teeth are sharp. Dean has no clue how something like that even got onto a fucking Greyhound without everyone else running screaming-- other than that it must not have looked like that to begin with.

The body it's crouched over-- what's left of it-- looks male and human, but other than that... Dean has no idea at all.

Dean shakes his head and gives a narrow whistle. He's seen werewolves, and that ain't one, never mind that it's daylight. "No fucking clue, but it doesn't exactly look natural. Wanna check it out?" It feels weirdly easy to offer, like it's the right thing. Like Sam can just slot into some open space that's Dean had for _partner_ since... since whenever. Since Dad's not here.

Sam turns to look at him and he doesn't think she's got the same open space at all. Her chin is jutted up and her fists are pressed up against her hips, elbows pointing out. Her eyes glint green in the light, like a pissed off cat. "Where's your father?" she asks. "Aren't we supposed to be finding him here? Isn't that the point?"

Dean forces himself not to look away. "He's where the supernatural crazies are, if you ask me," he says. "Even if he's not, don't you think it's worth a little bit of your time to stop that thing before it kills anyone else? Innocent people." Like Jessica, he doesn't say. He doesn't know if Sam hears it anyway, if she's the sort of person who _will_ hear Jess' name in everything from now on.

"That thing? We don't even know what that thing is," Sam says but her fists loosen a little. "From the news it sounds like there was a person on that bus, not... I don't know what. But that picture, Jesus fuck, Dean."

Dean frowns. "Lots of things can look like people, Sam, permanent or temporary," he says, quick and sharp, like his Dad had been when driving that lesson home. "If you forget that-- next thing you know the guy behind you on a bus is a fucking monster biting open your neck."

Sam rolls her eyes. "You don't need to teach me any lessons," she says. "I know more than you think."

Dean doesn't say anything until she turns and walks back to the car. He follows her out, waiting for her to yell, to something, but she doesn't. She just settles into the passenger seat, kicks off her boots and rests her feet on the dash.

"You think your dad will be hunting that guy on the bus down?" she asks. She looks out the window and not at him.

"If he knows about it," Dean says.

Sam nods. "Fair enough," she says softly. "If he knows about and if he knows what it is. Speaking of-- if _we_ don't know what it is, how are we going to hunt it? How are we even going to get close-- ride around and wait for it to take out more bus passengers?"

Dean grins even if she isn't looking at him to see it. "Leave that part to me," he says. "Believe me, babe, I am good at this shit." That, of all the things, makes her turn around. She's still got thick black circles under her eyes like smudged eyeliner, but she almost smiles.

"Fine," she says, "but no getting me killed. I've still got some revenge to get." Her eyes are gleaming, and if she were any other girl he'd assume she was thinking about crying. There's something narrow and dark behind her eyes that Dean's never seen in a human face other than a hunter's.

"Yeah," Dean says because there's nothing else to say. He can smell her hair, sweet under the motel shampoo and it makes him shiver.

\

When they pull up to the bus on the side of the road, they're almost blinded by the glare of sirens. Cops everywhere, everything cordoned off for miles.

Dean pulled over a few miles back to change into one of his cheap suits. Sam just rolled her eyes and watched him fumble around from the rear view mirror, but he didn't get any of his own back-- he figures he'll have to buy some women's suits later. In the meantime he's just going to brazen out why a kid who's more than likely underage and dressed like a bum or a backpacker is tagging along after a federal agent.

"I'm Agent Young, FBI," he tells Sam. "You follow my lead."

Sam stares at him, like she just found him hiding out under her trash container. "Isn't impersonating an officer a federal offense?" she asks.

"Yeah, so?" Dean says and she just rolls her eyes and shrugs, proving she just said that to be annoying. Which she is. Sam is one of the most successfully annoying people he's ever met, she is so lucky she's a hot chick.

The thing is, when it's actually time to face down the cops, it turns out he barely has to say a word, never mind lead. Sam peers out from behind him, white faced and pushed to the edge looking in a way that makes her face seem even younger and so wide-eyed she looks stupidly innocent. If Dean hadn't see her in action he'd never call her for anything but a completely petrified, utterly innocent kid in way over her head. Even knowing better he half wants to push her into the car and get her the fuck out of here.

"Agent Young brought me to identify the body," she tells the cop-- a freaked out looking county guy with an expression that might as well be an advertisement for in over his head and shit out of luck. "I recognized him when I saw him... on the news."

It shouldn't work-- Dean knows for a fact that the dead guy's own mother shouldn't have recognized him from what they saw on the news, but Sam's already looking past the cop to the body on the stretcher, half covered by a sheet, like it's being loaded up for the meat wagon.

"His name is Ansem, we rode the rails together for a few months last summer," she says, sad and serious, and her eyes are so big and sincere that Dean finds himself believing her.

"That's a dangerous game to be playing, young lady," the cop says, but his face is really soft, like cops get around kids or donuts. He even glares at Dean over her shoulders like it's somehow all his fault, which just makes Dean shrug.

"I know," Sam whispers, eyes downcast. "I'm sorry. It's just... Ansem. I can't-- I don't understand. What happened?"

The cop shakes his head. "I can tell you this much, kid. It's nothing like anything I've ever seen in twenty years on this patrol and I'd be fine never seeing it again. It was more like something out of a monster movie than-- whatever this was."

"I don't--" Sam's eyes get even dewier until she's practically in Japanese cartoon country. Dean just stays at her shoulder and keeps his damn mouth shut. "A monster?"

The cop shudders. Just a small motion, but Dean's met a lot of cops and he knows what it takes to get that reaction. "It-- he kept begging us to kill him. Before it ran away."

"I saw it on the news," Sam whispers and the cop just nods at her, like he gets it. He gets it better than Dean, anyway.

"Seriously, kid," he says. "Don't end up like your friend. Go home, wherever home is for you. I don't want to be putting you on a gurney."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sam says. Her eyes are cast down and she looks so young and so tired that Dean just wants to wrap her up and... something. It doesn't matter what, she'd never let him anyway.

\  
Sam doesn't say much else until they're back in the Impala. Even there, she just grunts something and leans over like she's threatening to put one of the scary girl tapes Dean has seen peeking out of her duffle into the tapedeck.

"Driver picks the music," Dean spits out before she gets the chance. If there's one thing he's totally not game for it's a round of out of tune chicks with loud guitars. "And that shit is so not music."

Sam snorts and rolls her eyes. "Yeah, I forgot. You only like women in rock and roll if they're crawling around in black latex and licking ice cubes."

"I do not!" Dean says and his grip tightens on the steering wheel. "I mean, not that there's anything wrong with black latex. Black latex is just plain awesome."

Sam's mouth quirks. "I'll bet," she says. "Jess has this clubbing dress that totally looks like it's been glued on. Man, you should see--" Dean can see, out of the corner of his eye. The second it hits her and she falters and stops. Her eyes are dry, as best as he can see. A second later she picks her thread of words back up, but it's a world away from what they were talking about before. "So what the hell do you think that was on that bus? What looks like a totally normal guy before going haywire and trying to eat the dude in the next seat?"

"Could be a lot of things," Dean says, and he glances at her out of the corner of his eye. Easier than looking head on. "Lots of things have a taste for flesh."

He can feel how hot Sam's glare is. Acid like. "A taste for flesh? Fuck you, Dean, this isn't a bad horror movie. Demons are real, I get that. And ghosts. What else is real? Give me a laundry list."

Dean shrugs and stares at the road. "Pretty much everything except for Santa, God and the Easter Bunny," he finally says when the silence stretches out too far. "Oh, and vampires. Well, I ain't seen any sign of them anyway."

Sam glares at him some more and then draws her legs back like she's going to kick the dashboard. Lucky for Dean she doesn't, because that would have been a lot to deal with. Sam's got problems, but it's not his baby's fault. Instead she just hisses through her teeth.

"'Pretty much everything' isn't going to help us track that thing down. Not very meaningful," she says after a long pause.

Dean feels his eyebrow go up, almost without his input. The words spill out of his mouth the same way. Stupid and thoughtless. "I thought all you cared about was finding my dad. I can't promise he's going to be there."

Sam taps her toes against the dashboard, but not hard enough to worry Dean. "That was before I saw Ansem on that gurney," she whispers. "This is a really big deal, I get that much."

Dean almost runs off the road, his neck swivels so fast to stare at her. "Wait," he says. "Wait. All that shit you were spinning for the cop about knowing that guy is true?"

If Sam notices his reaction it doesn't make her blink. "As far as it goes. Yeah, that was Ansem. I rode the rails with the guy, he was kind of... I knew him about as well as anybody did."

Dean swallows hard. He doesn't know if the thing he's worried about is that Sam hitched rides on train tracks—probably not, crazy bitch can take care of herself— or that Sam hadn't bothered to tell him she knew the dead guy. Or maybe just how smooth she was about the whole thing. "He was your friend?" he asks, instead of yelling.

Sam just shakes her head, like it's critical. "It wasn't even like that," she says. She still has that important face on, but when she speaks it's carefully, like she's trying not to let on if it's a big deal or not. "It's just that we were the same. He was like me."

"Like you how?" Dean mutters, but Sam shakes her head again and doesn't smile.

"He just... got me, you know? Not a lot of people get it like that," she finally says. "I mean— he was a complete asshole, don't get me wrong. I'm not surprised he got killed by something, but some kind of a... a boogie man? It's a lot to take in." She makes a noise that sounds like it's trying to pass for a laugh. "I guess I should be getting used to it, though."

"Quit it," Dean says, sharp and fiercer than he meant to. He stops at a light and looks her in the eyes. For whatever reason, she looks right back at him. The black under her eyes looks darker, thicker. He wants to rub it off with his thumbs like it's just smeared mascara, not exhaustion. "Stop it, Sammy. It's not your fault, okay?"

"I didn't say it was," she says, but she sighs when Dean just raises an eyebrow and stares her down. "You don't know that," she says after a moment of that staring. She's sitting up straight and she looks as serious as he feels. "You don't know anything about me other than that people around me die. You could be the next one to die, for all either of us knows and then you can tell me it's not my fault."

At that Dean can't keep his face straight at all. The smirk just comes natural. "Man, that is one thing you don't need to worry about, baby. I'm a professional at killing the boogie men and it hasn't killed me once."

Sam stares at him for a long moment before she bursts into laughter. Real laughter for once, almost as sweet as her wide white grin, like she's forgotten to be sad. The expression sends a shot of warmth down Dean's spine, like he just slammed down a fifth of whiskey. "How do I know that's true? You could be secretly like... a zombie. Zombies are totally dead and kicking."

Dean thinks about that for longer than he really should, mostly just to see how far he can stretch that smile. "Nah, even I wouldn't be awesome enough to keep that a secret."

"Fine. Be that way." She huffs an irritated breath, but her smile is slow to fade. Not until someone behind them honks because the light's turned and they're holding traffic up. She jerks at the noise and looks away, like she's just remembered she's supposed to be miserable. "Just keep on not dying and I may even forgive you. You damn well better outlive me, Dean Winchester."

"No problem," Dean says, but she doesn't seem to hear him. She turns to the window and stares out of it, like he's not even there at all.

When he pulls into the motel parking lot she just rolls her eyes at him like she isn't upset at all and asks, "So, how are we going to track down a killer cannibal monster if we don't know anything about it?"

Dean shrugs and scratches the back of his neck. "Dunno," he mumbles. "You any good at research?" He tries to keep from sounding too ridiculously hopeful at that. Doing the research reminded him way too much of being a stupid, skinny kid, too small to carry a real gun. Too small to do any of the heavy lifting on a hunt, just research and more research.

Sam, though, she smiles. "Yeah," she says. "You bet I am. Jess always used to make me do it for school projects. She-- yeah. I am. Any ideas where to start?"

Dean shrugs and doesn't push her slip on Jess. "Good," he says instead. "We need to track down everything we can about this thing at the local library. Check out back issues of the paper on microfilm, that kind of thing."

Sam raises an eyebrow. "Which local library? The one the bus came from? The one it was going to? The place that guy tore Ansem's throat out? Big radius for libraries."

"Well, what do you suggest?" Dean says sharply.

"Join the 21st century and spend some time with google so we can narrow our range?" Sam says. "We can hit an Internet cafe and get started."

Dean bites his lip from the inside. Possibly he should have thought of that. Maybe. "Um. Well, I've got a laptop."

Sam turns and stares at him. "You do? And you haven't tried that for research yet?" She shakes her head. "Dude, what do you use it for, porn?"

Dean can actually feel his face heat up even while he pastes his smirk on. "Hey, it's cheaper than unscrambling cable in every shitty motel room, okay?"

Sam just rolls her eyes and mutters something incomprehensible under her breath. "Give it over. Let's see if we can narrow this thing down a little before we hit the microfilm, cool?"

"Do they even have a connection here?" he mutters, but Sam just lets her lips curl up and winks at him, like she knows something he doesn't.

About twenty minutes later he's bored to death of looking over her shoulder while she picks her way through whatever she's got going on. Research always gave him a headache, even when he was a school kid and his dad pushed it on him because it was the safe end of things.

Sam, though, acts like she's right where she wants to be, hunched over a laptop and chewing on the cap of a motel pen, humming around it. "I've got links on a couple of similar murders," she says another ten minutes after Dean's given up and taken to idle channel surfing instead. "Starting way up in Saskatchewan in Canada and moving South."

Dean turns over on his stomach and raises an eyebrow. "Yeah?" he asks. There's no way it can be this easy, can it?

"Yeah," Sam says and raises her brow right back in a matching gesture. "Does a psychiatric condition called Wendigo Psychosis mean anything to you?"

"What? Wait. Wendigos? Those are nasty ass motherfuckers." Dean frowns. "That could fit though-- they do start out as people in all the legends."

Sam leans down, tucking her chin into her palm and looking right at Dean. "Well, the disease is classified as people who think that they're Wendigos, not actual boogie men, but I'll play. What makes a person into a Wendigo? Eating human flesh, right?"

Dean frowns. "That's the legend. People who resort to cannibalism turn into flesh eating monsters. They lose their humanity and get taken over by this-- hunger, I guess."

"Hunger," Sam repeats softly. "Fuck. Okay." She rubs the space between her eyes. "Okay, yeah. So how do we find it and... I dunno, satiate it?"

"_Satiate_ it?" Dean snorts. Sometimes Sam is awesome and sometimes she's the weirdest person he's ever met. "Where do learn words like that, school for geeks? We're going to kill the fucking thing, Sammy, not feed it. It killed your friend, remember?"

"He wasn't my friend," Sam says. She keeps rubbing that same spot, over and over, like she's picked up a fast moving headache. "Ansem... he wasn't-- He was a pretty hungry guy himself."

"What's that mean?" Dean asks sharply, leaning toward her even when she pulls back. "Hungry guy? Did he eat people too or something? Because if he didn't, I don't see--"

"Nothing," she says, cutting him off. "It doesn't mean a thing. Nobody got eaten."

Dean wants to call her on it, pull whatever she isn't telling him right out of her like a game of tug-of-war. Her eyes are narrow, though, and she won't stop glaring. He looks away. "We should get some sleep tonight. See what we can track down in the morning," he says, softer than he'd meant to. "You look tired, Sam."

Sam's mouth curls up. "Yeah, that's going to help tons," she mutters. It's not until she's curled up in bed, with the covers tucked up high, all the way up to her eyes, that he even thinks to wonder why she's so willing to put her hunt for the thing that killed Jess on hold to chase down something that killed this guy... this guy that wasn't her friend.

He closes his eyes and doesn't sleep, he's too busy waiting for the other shoe to drop to be able to relax. It's not even a surprise when Sam's starts whimpering and shaking in her bed, wrapped up in one more nightmare that there's nothing Dean can do about. Like that, soft, stifled whimpers and straight spine, she reminds him too much of Dad when Dean was little. Dad only cried when he was supposed to be asleep too.

Dean stumbles over to her bed close enough to put his hand on her shoulder. He wants to shake her awake, something. Get her to stop making that sound.

When he touches her, she startles awake just like that, jerking hard away from his hands. Like he just put a lit match to her skin. Her eyes are dark in the sulfur yellow streetlights. There are wet tracks down her cheeks, glowing in what light there is. He can smell her, still so sweet.

"Don't," she mumbles. "Okay? Don't touch me."

He backs off so fast it makes him stumble even though the look on her face makes him want to offer more. To touch, if only for the comfort of it. As if his hands are going to make her feel better. "Sam," he says, but it sounds more like a question. A plea. "How can I-- what can I do?"

"I'm not going to fuck you," Sam tells him, like that's what he was asking her. Her hands flex visibly, drifting up like she's going to wipe the tears off her cheeks, but she doesn't touch skin. "I don't want to. She's dead, you dipshit, why would I want you?"

"Jesus," Dean mumbles, taking a wider step back. His skin crawls, as if what she said is true, as if he really was thinking... that. Something. "I didn't... I never. That's not fair."

"Leave me alone," Sam whispers. She pulls the sheet up over her head, hiding her face. He can barely hear her. "I just want to sleep. Don't touch me." She sounds young. She sounds like a little kid.

"Fine. I won't," Dean says, but he doesn't know if she's listening to him anymore. "No one asked you to anyway. Jesus, I'm not like that, okay? Bitch much." He says that, but it feels like he's lying. No matter how true it is, it still feels like he's lying.

"I just— Jess would, if she were— I just don't want anyone to touch me," Sam mumbles, but when Dean does say anything she doesn't either.

Dean crawls back into his own bed and covers his ears with his pillow so he can pretend that he's not listening to her cry herself to sleep. She still sounds like a kid, like a kid that knows no one is coming to comfort her when she cries. He doesn't know how he falls asleep, just that it's a long, long time after her sobs trail off into hiccups and her breathing steadies and evens.

In the morning she's the one who wakes him up. She's fresh scrubbed from the shower even if her clothes are stiff and a few days too many unwashed. Her hair is wet and drips down her back and over her face, leaving huge spots of water on her shirt.

It takes Dean a second to realize that he's awake because she's been throwing a pillow at his face over and over. He groans and covers it up, but Sam just laughs at him like she was never upset at all.

"Come on," she says. "We have a library to check out if we're going to find the clues to stay one step ahead of our Wendigo."

"The clues?" Dean mutters into one of the pillows that's laying half covering his face. "What is this, children's television?"

"Hey, you're the one who's all gung ho about saving people from the monster cannibal thing," Sam says. Her expression is sharp with an almost sitcom girlfriend level of disappointment. "Wake up, we gotta shag ass, man."

"I hate you," Dean says, with all the eloquence he's got. Sam laughs at him. Not visibly or anything, but he can tell by the twitch of her eyelashes that, actually, she's laughing.

\

In the end, it's a lot easier than Dean ever thought about. He flirts with a librarian in a tiny suburb on the outskirts of Boulder while Sam spends quality time with mircofilm and an extremely local newspaper. They sit down together and create a pattern of deaths and disappearances.

Sam chews on a pen cap while she works and she keeps her head bent low over a map. Watching her putting a hunt together like she was raised to do it is so weirdly hot Dean almost forgets last night and reaches out to touch her. It's only the memory of the way she sounded bawling her eyes out like a little kid that keeps him from doing it. It's better like this, when she's almost smiling at him and he can just about feel the sharp edges of her brain piecing things together, almost as well as his dad might if he were here.

"I think your father was right," Sam finally says. Her words are muffled, mumbled around the pen cap still between her teeth. "The coordinates he gave you are where we need to be, he was just a little bit early. The path these murders have been moving on... I think that's going to be ground zero for where it hits next. It's probably just waiting for the right victim."

She traces out the pattern on the map and Dean can only nod, because, yeah, of course. Dad was usually right. Sam's lips are pursed and softer than Dad's, her whole face is softer, rounder, but Dean's pretty sure she's going to be usually right too.

"So we go and find this thing," he says. The words feel solid, declarative.

Sam looks up at him, propping her chin on her knuckles. "And then what? Feed it? We don't even know what it looks like. I mean, it's obviously passing for human right up until it takes fucking bites out of people, Dean."

It takes him half a second to realize she's fucking with him. He rolls his eyes. "We figure out a way to find it and then we burn it," he says. "Duh. That's the really great thing about fire. Everything burns."

Sam stares at him for a second and then looks away. "Yeah. I can see that," she whispers. "I know that."

On the way out of the library, Sam's hands brush against Dean's thigh in a way that might be accidental. Maybe, except there's no way she's walking that close by accident. When he meets her eyes she winks at him, like she knows a secret. Like she was never sad or scared or someone who cried themselves to sleep, never in her life. Her face is smooth and young and pretty.

It never occurs to Dean to wonder what 'the right victim' thing is all about. Not yet.

\

The walls of the Blackwater Ridge Visitor's center were made of exposed, splintered wood. Dean hadn't noticed that before, hadn't really paid attention, but it's all he can think this time.

Dean imagines that the wood holds the smell of blood for longer. He's smelled this stink before, of course he has. Someone's insides, blood and shit and fluid. There are plenty of things that tear open people's insides.

Sam's the one that gets sick, gagging and covering her mouth. Dean watches her out of the corner of his eye while she stumbles outside, her hands scrambling for purchase on the door frame. She leans right over the threshold and throws up, a thick, heavy sound, almost as gut wrenching as the smell.

He waits for her, hand on his gun, a flamethrower that'll take out most anything, trying to watch her back and the wreckage at the same time. It used to be human, the meat that's scattered over the floor and ground into the walls. He's pretty sure it used to be human.

Sam straightens up eventually, hand still pressed over her mouth and nose, like she's trying to blot the smell out. She looks like she's going to say something, walks right up toward him, but then her eyes go wide and blank and whatever she's looking at is right behind him.

Dean blinks and watches her scramble to her knees, grabbing at something in a mess that he thinks might have been a hand. Whatever it is gleams dully under streaked blood and pulp.

It's a ring. Small and slender, for a girl's hand. There's a thin, bright diamond in the middle, but that's not what Sam's looking at. She scrubbing at the insides with her thumb and when Dean steps up to look down at her, he can sort of making out the engraving carved into the gold.

"_Ava_," Sam mumbles. Her hands are shaking visibly. "Fuck. Jesus. What the fuck were you doing here?"

"Sam," Dean whispers. His brains feels stalled out, in neutral. This has to make sense, but he's just spinning his wheels, can't make it work. "What— are you—can I?" He doesn't wait for her to say anything, just puts his hands on her shoulders, slow and careful. He expects her to jerk back, scream at him, something.

Instead, she clambers up to her feet, slow, like something hurts. She even takes his hand when he offers it. Takes his hand and then puts her face in his shoulder and keeps it there. He can hear the soft, gasping sounds she makes, feel the spreading damp through his shirt, but she doesn't speak.

And Dean, Dean who knows better than to let his guard down in the middle of a hunt, who really knows even if he doesn't always show it, he's too busy stroking her shoulder, her hair, trying to talk her down, to notice the second that they're not alone in the room anymore.

It's the low growl that tugs him out of it. Rumbling and deep, like a threatened animal. When Dean starts up and scans the room, he sees it standing outside the doorway.

It. It's a he. A man, almost human, much more so in the real light than it had looked on a grainy television screen, but with something subtly shaded wrong in his face. A little too sallow, too sunken, like a corpse where decay's just begun to set in. Sniffing the air in a gesture that isn't human at all.

His eyes, though—those look like a man's. Huge and starved, almost all whites, like something from a special on famine on PBS, but human. He stares at Dean out of those eyes and raises up hands that are twisted up, like an old arthritic man.

"You have to kill me," the man mumbles. "You have to kill me. You have to kill me. I can smell them. I can smell them."

Dean feels the shudder, visceral and stomach deep. He wants to throw up now when even the stink of death couldn't do it. Looking at this man, he wants to throw up. "Why did you do it?" he says, instead of just shooting. Like this thing really is a person and not... _not_. "What the fuck?"

"Please," the man mumbles and shambles closer. "I can smell _them_. They look like people, but they smell like power and I'm so hungry. I'm so hungry."

Dean swallows hard. He's got the gun out on pure, smooth instinct. Doesn't ever remember pulling it. The creature shuffles closer and closer, the smell of him getting stronger. It's heavy, the stink, like a weight, like a physical presence, and Dean gags on it. "They were people," he hisses.

The thing... man... thing, it shudders and sniffs the air. "I can smell," he whispers. "I can smell them. I could smell him, the boy on the bus, in front of me. The girl. The others. The whole time, I could smell them. Like I was starving to death. I was starving to death and they can feed me."

"You're not supposed to eat people," Dean hisses and cocks his gun. "No one cares what they smell like, Jesus. About... about power..." He should shoot. Dean knows he should shoot.

"I can smell it now," the man blubbers. "I can. It went away when the girl-- when I killed her, but it's back now— why won't you kill me? Kill me quick, I can—"

Dean hears her before he sees her. The click of Sam's boots on the ground. "You can smell me," she says. Her voice doesn't shake. She talks like she's listing facts, one by one. "Ansem. Ava. Now me. They ran away, didn't they? They tried to fight you."

The man howls. That's the only word for it. It's visceral, awful, and it freezes Dean in his tracks for just a second, for just long enough. He's already got his flare gun up and cocked. He's ready. He's so ready. He's too late.

"Give her to me," the monster howls. "That girl. Give me her. I'm hungry."

Sam's faster than Dean, ready before him. She pulls out in front of him, too slippery for him to grab. Dean can't see her face, can't guess what she's thinking. Her hair brushes his cheek when she darts by, soft, prickly with static electricity.

"Eat, then," she whispers, so soft Dean can barely hear her. "I'm here. I'm not afraid."

"Sam—" he screams over her, but if she's listening it doesn't make her so much as flinch. She holds her hands out in front of her, palms forward like an offering.

"I'm here," she sounds so steady. Dean tries to aim past her, over her shoulder, but he can't get an angle no matter how much he squirms. "If you're hungry," Sam says. "Eat, and be satisfied."

Dean can't see. She's too close, in his line of fire. If he shoots, she'll die. If he shoots she'll burn. He's about to watch it happen. "Sam," he says, and he's running, but there's not enough space and there's still too much distance to cover all at once. "Sammy!"

He can't see, it happens too fast. The thing... the man, it's mouth. It's not a person's mouth. It's teeth and nightmare and the stench and rot of hunger, like something that hasn't eaten for days. He sees it's mouth clamping down on Sam's wrists, her hands. Small, suntanned hands, girl slender. Dean sees blood.

She doesn't scream. Dean sees blood and then... then he sees shadow. It's spilling out of the creature, out of its ears and eyes and nose. Boiling shadow, like a starless night without streetlights distilled.

"Get out," Sam says, steady, like she hasn't noticed the blood spilling down her hands and arms, fast, so damned fast. "Eat of my body, drink of my blood, and get _out_. I expel you."

It howls again, thick and hungry, all the human gone. The dark keeps boiling out, out, like there's bottomless pit of trapped under human skin. "In whose name?" it hisses. "God's? It's a mockery in your mouth."

Sam shakes her head. Her hair is loose and sticky, red spattered. "In my name, with my blood. You were hungry, now you've eaten. Get out."

When the darkness sputters out the man falls down limp on the floor. Dean doesn't think he's breathing, but his skin looks normal again. A person's skin, but when Sam falls down on her knees it's her Dean goes too. The other might as well not be there. He's already ripping his shirt off, pressing it down to her wrists to staunch the ragged wounds.

She doesn't say anything and Dean doesn't ask, not until he gets her back to the car. Carries her, cradling her while she presses the ruined pieces of shirt tight against her wrists. He gets her down and scrambles for the first aid kit.

She's white and shaking by the time he finishes getting her wrists bandaged. He doesn't know if she's going to be okay after some steak, juice and vitamin b-12 or if he needs to get her to a hospital and after all the injuries he's seen he ought to know, but Sam isn't giving anything away. Fucked if he even knows what a hospital would say. Dean isn't even sure what he's going to say, but in the end he doesn't have to say anything at all.

Sam sounds tired, old, when she talks. "So, you kill the supernatural, right?" she whispers.

Dean shrugs, like he can't understand what she's saying, but that's a lie. "Ansem," Sam says, still soft voiced. "I told you, he was like me. He could... he could do things, okay? Like, with his brain."

"Wait. What?" Dean's voice comes out too loud, like he's blustering. Like none of it makes any sense.

Sam laughs shortly, like she can't manage a sob. "Not exactly like me. He could... it was like hypnosis, but not really. Like people think hypnosis works in a cheesy stage show. You know, the guy in the magician hat says cluck like a chicken? Well... Ansem. Ansem could make you cluck like a chicken, for real."

"Did he--"

"His power didn't work on me. Never did," Sam says, like that was going to be Dean's question. He goes still and pretends it was. "Ava. She was like me. Well, she didn't have a demon with a direct lien on her soul, but we could do similar shit."

"What does that mean, exactly?" Dean whispers. Sam just shrugs.

"Still want to save me?" she asks instead of answering. "Still gonna protect me? Because if not, I bet that flare gun would work pretty good on me."

Dean rubs his forehead. "Fuck, you're an annoying bitch," he mumbles. He stares down at her wrists, white as the bandages under her tan. Fragile looking.

"You don't know anything about me," Sam says.

"I think I'm going to find out," he replies. He's not sure when he stopped caring about the fact he's losing his mind. "It's better than your Jess got, right?" The words come out twisted, more vicious than he meant.

Sam stares up at him, wide-eyed, blinking. "What?" she whispers. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"If you loved her that much, how could you lie to her?" Dean's hands are balled up tight, but he doesn't remember moving them. He knows he's glaring, but he can't stop. He can see the words smack home, see Sam flinch before she steadies himself. He doesn't even know where what he's saying is coming from. "I mean, I get that you might not want to tell her things, but all of this shit. You're crazy."

"I did it because I loved her," Sam whispers. She hangs loose, limp in the back seat of his car. Like the wounded. "I wanted her to be separate from the bad shit, the crazy shit." She smiles at him, vague and blank. "You might understand if you'd ever actually been in love with someone."

Dean has never wanted to hit a girl as much in his life as he does in that second. Just wipe that smile off her stupid face. "You don't know a damn thing about me," he seethes, but that rueful smile on Sam's face doesn't so much as twitch.

"You're right," Sam says. She closes her eyes. "I don't get you at all, Dean Winchester. And honestly, I'm not sure why I should be bothered to try."

"I'm in love with you," Dean says. His head aches. He aches. That's the word for what he feels after all. "So don't tell me I don't know what it feels like, okay, Sam? I'm in love with you, and you're lying to me and fucking with my head and fuck knows what else you are."

Sam goes still, like he really did smack her. She raises a hand to her mouth. A white, bandaged hand, slim and pretty. There's red spreading over the white, like a stain. "Well then you're stupid," she spits, but there's wetness on her cheeks that isn't blood. She scrubs at it, but it's there.

"I'm in love with you, and I just watched you try to feed yourself to a fucking monster, Sammy," Dean whispers. Chokes on it and he knows he's crying too. Fuck. Fuck. "Don't tell me any more fucking lies."

"I don't love you. Everything I love dies," Sam says, straightforward and matter of fact, but there's no smile on her face. She's still crying, harder now, thick, fast tears, even if they don't choke up her voice.

"I'm not dead and I don't have a fucking demon contract on my soul either," Dean says. He takes one of her hands and presses his mouth to the fingertips, gentle, soft. Her skin is cold. God, she lost so much blood. "I think you're a lot worse off than me right now."

"What do you see in me to love?" Sam says a moment later and now her voice finally does falter. "Seriously, Dean, what the hell?"

Dean can only shrug. The truth is, he doesn't know, and he probably already sounds lame enough without telling her that it's something as stupid as that she smells like someone he was supposed to have known his whole life. That the smell of her hair gets under skin, familiar and strange and exactly right. It's instinct and Dean has always trusted his. "I can't explain it and since you're too blind to get it, you're going to learn to deal, okay?"

Sam shakes her head. "If you want to fuck, all you have to do is—"

"Sammy-baby," Dean whispers. "Shut up. Seriously." Then he kisses her. Just a brush of lips, waiting for her to flinch back, jump away, yell at him. Waiting for her to tell him he's a fucking head case and make him stop.

Instead she kisses him back, lips parting. Her mouth is hard, like the most vicious, meanest girl Dean ever kissed, but he goes with it, giving it gentle to her rough. Cups her cheeks in his hands and rubs his thumbs over the tears and blood stains like he's rubbing them clean. It doesn't feel like victory until her mouth softens against his and she lets him go, lets him kiss her the way he wants. Gentle, delicate, like she's the prettiest girl in the world.

"I don't know what you want from me," she whispers afterward. She's shaking, like she's scared.

"That's okay," Dean says. "It's nothing you can't do." He feels like smiling, because its true. Sam bites her lip, but she doesn't look away.

"Yeah," she says. "I guess we'll see about that." She doesn't back off though, she stays put, close enough for Dean to feel the warmth of her skin.


	5. Ceasefire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A phone call from an old friend pulls Dean off course. This picks up directly from where [I Will Always Be Hungry](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/56777.html) left off, so read that first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks [](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/profile)[**azephirin**](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/) and [](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/profile)[**cormallen**](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/) for audiencing. You guys are _awesome_.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **SPN Fic: Ceasefire (girl!Sam/Dean)** _

Title: Ceasefire   
Rating: Adult (yes, there is porn)  
Characters, Pairing: Girl!Sam/Dean, Cassie  
Summary: A phone call from an old friend pulls Dean off course. This picks up directly from where [I Will Always Be Hungry](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/56777.html) left off, so read that first.  
Notes: Thanks [](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/profile)[**azephirin**](http://azephirin.livejournal.com/) and [](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/profile)[**cormallen**](http://cormallen.livejournal.com/) for audiencing. You guys are _awesome_.  
  


 

Dean burns the Blackwater Ridge Visitor's Center to the ground with what's left of the Wendigo's body still inside, soaked in accelerant for that extra crispy effect. Sam stays in the car while he works, but she watches with her chin pressed up against the glass while the place lights up and catches. Dean watches her. Her bandaged wrists are on her lap, limp and loose and there's filth and blood on her face. Her eyes are dark in the flickering fire light. Probably, she hates fire. Definitely she has reason to.

"Let's get out of here already," she says when Dean slides into the driver's side and closes the door. "I bet there's a fire alarm or something that's gonna get triggered and I don't wanna explain this to a fireman."

Dean nods and goes. He stops to get them takeout from a drive through window on the way back to their motel because he's bleary with hunger and Sam's shaky. There's no way he's going into a diner or whatever with him and Sam looking like extras in a zombie flick-- the ones that got sprayed down with fake gore before they're allowed on set. Even through the drive through window he can see the guy behind the glass give him a stink-eye and visibly decide it's not worth his minimum wage salary to think about a couple of literally bloody idiots in a car.

Once they're back in the motel, Sam pushes in front of him and into the shower and out again insanely fast. She settles in by the cramped desk in the corner, damp sweat-shirt clinging to her skin, to demolish the food. Sam eats like a trucker, just dives into her burger like she's starving to death. It's ridiculous, there's no way she can eat this much all the time-- he can see the knobs on her spine and the stark relief of her collar bone when she's not dressed in layers-- but then there's muscle on her too. Maybe she just burns it all off, disappearing into whipcord.

"We need to talk," he says, when both burgers and the supersized fries are gone and he's holding her right hand still, rebandaging her wrists.

Sam wipes her mouth with the hand he isn't working on and raises an eyebrow. She's not like the girl who bled and screamed and kissed him anymore. Her mouth is compressed, business like. She isn't quite smiling. "What we need is to find your father," she says after a pause. "He either knows something or he doesn't and I have to know for sure."

Dean looks away. "He knows something," he mutters. "I know he does. I just don't know where to look for him."

Sam makes a low noise that sounds almost like a snort. "Real nice of him giving his only kid this much direction. I'm sure he's an excellent parent, really."

Dean doesn't blink. He hasn't known Sam for that long no matter what it feels like, but he's already got that going for the jugular is her special gift. "You don't have any rig—you don't know him," he mutters. "He's my dad. He... did fine."

Sam snickers, sharp and cruel. He can feel the tremble of the muscle and bone under his fingers when she breathes. "Yeah," she says. "Well, weren't you a lucky boy? Take a shower, Dean, you stink."

"Fuck you, Sam," he spits at her. "Does being a giant bitch make you feel like a better person or something?" He doesn't go right away, though. He finishes off her left wrist, slow and deliberate, careful thumbs and fingers on her skin. Doing it right. She doesn't flinch away, not even when he finishes and lets her go. She doesn't say a damn word, just... just looks at him. He doesn't know what the look on her face is, what she ever means.

He gets up and slams the bathroom door shut behind him with a loud, jerky motion.

The shower water is hot and prickly on his face. It makes his body ache. There's a wet bar of tiny motel soap sticking to the edge of the tub where Sam must have dropped it and he uses that. Imagines it smells like her, it must smell like her.

_'Fuck you too, Dean,'_ he imagines her growling into his ear, low and rough. Her hands would be rough too, on his dick if she jerked him off. He's got his hands on himself before he even thinks about it, shaking with left over adrenaline. A day's worth of monster fighting and Sam. The taste of her mouth and the sharp bleeding edge of her tongue.

Dean tries to tell himself it's not the first time he's loved a girl who can't love him back. It's not her fault she can't. It's really not. He imagines her finger nails, tight and sharp, digging against his skin and he pulls himself off, tight and hard. Comes as fast as if he hadn't in weeks, his knees shaking, shoulders pressed against the tiles for balance.

The water's lukewarm by the time he steps out and wraps a towel around himself.

When he gets out into the room, she's curled up on the furthest edge of the bed by the door, the sheets and comforter pulled up to her chin. Her eyes are closed too tightly for her to really be asleep and he can see her shift a little at the sound of the door.

"Sam," he calls, softly, soft enough not to wake her if she really is asleep. "Let me take the spot by door." He doesn't say, I can protect you better from there. Instead he says, "You're hurt. Your wrists will slow you down if you need to draw a weapon."

Her lashes flutter and she opens her eyes. "God, you're a headcase," she mutters. But she shifts over on the bed, wiggling until she's on the inner side. She pulls a knife out from under the other pillow case and tucks it under hers instead before she pats the pillow beside her lightly. "Come here, then," she says.

Dean blinks and stares at the expanse of space she's opened up on the bed. "Wait, you want me to sleep with you?" he sputters. "I thought--"

"Well, I guess you could be a good guard dog and sleep in front of the door, but that doesn't seem fair," she says. Her eyebrow goes up and she smiles. She pats the space next to her again. He notices that the bandages on her wrists are the same faded off white as the sheets. He notices the little hairs on her arms are darker in contrast. "Come on, you're the one in love with me, right? So quit arguing and come here."

"You're the headcase," Dean mumbles, but he comes. His feet shuffle on the threadbare carpet underneath him and he stops and fusses around to check the locks, then comes back to plump the pillow and make sure he's got his gun in easy reach before he finally climbs into bed next to her.

She grins at him before she turns out the light. "Goodnight, Dean," she says. He sighs and lets his eyes go closed. He's almost asleep before he hears her whisper, "I'm sorry. You're still crazy, though."

He yawns. "Takes one to know one," he whispers back. If she answers, he's not awake to hear her.

His cell wakes him up at least an hour before morning could officially be considered to start as far as he's concerned. It's a persistent ring, an Alice Cooper riff that used to make Dad laugh when he was a kid and they were driving between jobs. The ring is programmed for the most important numbers Dean has.

Dad. Dean jerks awake, grabbing at the phone before his eyes are all the way open. Vaguely, he can hear Sam grumbling from the other side of the bed, but he already has the phone to his ear. "Dad," he hisses.

"What? Dean? Is that you?" The voice is a woman's, thin and worn. Familiar. Someone Dean expected to hear from again, oh, just about never. "Dean?"

Dean swallows. "Cassie," he says to the other girl who couldn't love him back. "Hi. Jesus. What is it? Are you okay?"

There's a pause, slow, deliberate. Cassie liked her meaningful pauses. There'd been a lot of them in the conversation where she told him she wanted him gone. This time she says something else. She says, "I'm sorry. You were right and I'm sorry. I need your help."

Dean listens.

Sam is already awake and rubbing her eyes by the time Dean clicks his phone closed. She stretches out and flipped on the light. "So," she says, yawn pulling out the words. "Who's Cassie?"

Dean shrugs and stares down at his phone. "Girl I used to know. She needs me to come see her. It's kind of out of our way, though. Southeast Missouri. Cape Girardeau."

There's a faint edge of a smile on Sam's lips. "Ah," she says. "So, I guess we're taking another detour from looking for your dad, huh?"

Dean's head jerks up and he's already shaking it. Then he stops, frowning. "I don't... she's in trouble. Sounds like a haunting. But, if you don't want-- I--"

Sam leans back, her thick hair sliding down to cover her eyes. "Well," she says, slow, meditative. "Sometimes I'm a giant bitch, and sometimes I'm a better person. Anyway, we don't... we don't know how to find your dad. But I've got... other threads of research I was looking into before I met you."

"Before?" Dean frowns. He slides out of bed, feet rubbing against the worn carpet. "What research?"

"There's a folklorist working as an adjunct at the Southeast Missouri State University," Sam says. "I wrote to her about a book she had on demonology before I went to-- to see Jess." The pause is short one, but Dean waits for her to get over it. "The details are sketchy but it's apparently one of a kind. It could be worth tracking down and she's willing to let me take a look if I come in person."

"That's the first I'm hearing of it," Dean says. He doesn't want to question Sam's sudden urge to cooperate, but-- "It doesn't sound like much of a lead."

Sam shrugs and flicks a fingernail against Dean's nose. "Don't look gift horses in the mouth, Dean-o," she says.

He smiles, he can't help it. "Yeah, sure, Sammy."

Sam tilts her head forward like she's trying to hide a smile. "Tell me about her. Cassie," she says.

"She's an old friend," Dean says, even though friend was the last thing he ever thought of when he had Cassie on his mind. "She... there have been deaths, people close to her and the circumstances make it sound like my kind of thing. She's scared."

"She knows about your kind of thing?" Sam asks. There's a faint frown curling the edges of her lips down. "That's a pretty close friend."

All Dean can do is shake his head. "Well. She knew. I mean, I told her. She didn't really believe me before all of this went down, I don't think." Think. She'd screamed. Called him crazy, crazy. Gonna call the loony bin and have the take you away, Dean. Lock you down.

"Ah," Sam says, slow, thoughtful. "I see." Dean doesn't ask what she sees, exactly. He's not sure he wants to know.

Sam packs her duffel without another word and hums out of tune while she does it. She washes down some Tylenol with the coffee Dean brews, but that's the only sign her wrists hurt. She doesn't say anything else until they're settled into the Impala. Her feet rest on the dash and she's watching him from under her eyelashes.

"I am really sorry about what I said before," she says, out of nowhere.

"About what?" Dean blinks. The early morning sun is bright, reflecting off her hair, making it glossy, beautiful.

"About how you'd understand keeping things from someone if you loved them. I guess you don't. You told Cassie, didn't you?" Her voice is light, as if it doesn't bother her at all.

Dean sputters and almost swerves. "What-- I never said--"

Sam laughs. She sounds happy, careless. "Yeah," she says. "Whatever, Dean Winchester."

\  
Cassie looks at Sam like she's never seen anything like her before. Maybe it's the bandaged wrists and the faint outline of bruises on her cheeks. Maybe it's just that she's tall as a tree trunk and thin as bone and sinew under her layers of shirts. She looks so good to Dean he's never really thought hard about how she'd look to someone else, someone like Cassie.

"This is Sam," Dean says. He almost says 'my girl Sam', wants to say it, but he doesn't know how and if Sam will take that.

Sam smiles and holds out her hand. Her teeth are white and it's a small smile, nervous, abashed. "Samantha Reynolds," she says. "It's a pleasure to meet you." If Dean didn't know better, all he'd see was sincerity.

"Cassie Robinson," Cassie offers back. She looks at Dean over Sam's shoulders but she takes her hand anyway, without really blinking. "You've been with Dean for a while?"

Sam just shrugs and nods, easy. As far as Dean can tell the lies always spill out of her easy, easier than the truth. "You could say that," she says. "I'm his little sister." Dean can feel his jaw dropping but Sam just turns and winks at him. Her elbow digs casually into his side, like she's daring him to argue.

Cassie gives a look of polite confusion. Her gaze flicks over to Dean and back to Sam. "Dean never mentioned--"

"Half-sister, really," Sam interrupts. "Same mom. Different dads. You know how it is." She nods aggressively and takes a step back, pushing Dean forward. "Dean's told me a lot about you."

Cassie shakes her head and smiles, obviously still confused, but there's the beginning of a smile on her face. "Did you really?" she asks Dean. Dean can only swallow and nod and wish to hell he knew what Sam was playing at.

"I'll leave you two to it, then," Sam says, still bright and cheerful. She claps her hand against Dean's shoulder, warm and steady. When Dean looks at her, she doesn't waver. "I've got an appointment with the professor I told you about."

"Sam--" Dean starts and stops, what he had to say withering under Sam's bright, bright smile.

"Yeah, Dean?" she asks, tilting her head.

He draws a slow breath and then digs his hand into his pocket, coming up with the keys to the car. Wordlessly he presses them into Sam's hand. Her long sleeves slide back, showing the blanched white of her bandages. "Take the car," he says. "Just bring her back in the same shape you got her in."

Sam stares at her hand like she has no idea how the keyring got there. Dean is meanly glad that he's the one who confused her this time. "Okay," she says, soft. "I'll bring it back."

Dean smirks at her. "Good. I love that car, so take care of my girl," he says and he knows Sam hears what he isn't saying when she winces just a little. When Sam walks out the door, Dean takes a deep breath and settles in to listen to Cassie tell him her story about scattered death and ghosts.

"I don't know what to do," Cassie tells him. She grabs one of his hands and he lets her hold it, warm and desperate. A couple months ago, this was the kind of thing he'd have fantasized about. This girl, needing him, wanting him. Believing in him.

It still feels good. It feels surprisingly easy to sit there and tell Cassie how he's going to protect her, tell her about salt and ghosts and rituals and have her nod and believe him. Sam believes him, had from the word go, but she's never believed _in him_.

Still... when Cassie reaches for his hand he lets her hold it, but he ducks so that her kiss falls on his cheek and not his mouth. This would be easy, and fuck, it's funny to think of Cassie Robinson as anything like easy. It shows just how many ways there are that Sam is hard.

"She's not really your sister, is she?" Cassie asks softly when he pulls away. "Sam?"

"Sam's complicated," Dean says and he finds it's not so bad to meet Cassie's rueful smile with one of his own.

"If you were my boyfriend, I wouldn't lie about it," Cassie says, but there's no sting or threat in the words. She squeezes Dean's hand and shakes her head. "Guess I lost my chance there."

Dean sighs and scratches the back of his neck with his free hand. "Uh," he manages. "This is... really...uh."

"Awkward," Cassie finishes for him and he shrugs and smiles. She lets go of his hand and they talk about ghosts instead. A truck of all things, which almost makes him laugh except that the dead people make it deadly serious.

"It's killing them. I loved them and they're dying and it feels like it's only going to get worse. Sounds funny, doesn't it? I mean--- what could be worse? I don't know what to do," she whispers. And Dean, Dean might not love her anymore, but it doesn't mean he ever wanted this.

"I'll fix it," he promises. "I will." Unlike Sam's, Cassie's problems are ones Dean's almost sure he knows how to fix. That... that's something. He misses being able to fix things.

\

Sam shows up at the motel about a half an hour after Cassie drops him off there. She's humming under her breath and she's got a binder full of photocopies tucked under her arm. "Brought your car back scratchless," she says, and tosses him the keys. He catches them easily and tucks them back into his pocket.

"Find what you were looking for?" Dean asks, nodding at Sam's binder.

She smiles. One of the real ones, all teeth and pleasure. It's contagious, Sam's smile. "Yeah, maybe. It's a lead anyway. How about you?"

"Evil racist trucks are trying to kill Cassie," Dean says solemnly. Sam stares at him and he just stares back for a long, deep moment. She actually cracks first, breaking into helpless giggles she tries to hide behind her palms. Dean has to bite the inside of his cheek.

"Wait, you're serious, aren't you?" she finally says when she manages to get herself back under control.

"Deadly serious. Some asshole ghost is manifesting as a truck and killing its way through the local African American population," Dean says. Sam gives a low whistle.

"How do you salt and burn a truck?" she asks. She settles down on the bed across from him and rests her chin on her palm. "They're not exactly inflammable. If you say very carefully, I'll kick your ass, by the way."

"Gotta find it first, be careful second," Dean says. It's a serious question, but he figures enough accelerant will do it, once he finds the thing.

"Burn the truck, get the gratitude of the fair lady. She is pretty, your Cassie," Sam murmurs. There's a faint, fond smile on her face, like she really is Dean's mom or sister, not... whatever she is. Fuck sisters anyway. "So you do still like her? I'm not wrong."

Dean groans and shakes his head. Girls suck. He knows that much, he doesn't need Sam forcing him to have the most awkward conversation in the history of awkward to prove it. "I dunno. No. I used to, you're totally wrong. You don't have to be jealous or anything."

Sam's smile widens. "I'm not," she says. Firm, like she means it. "Jealousy implies she's taking something from me. If you're happy, why would I care?"

"Wow, that's flattering." Dean doesn't know he's going to say that until the words slip out. He shakes his head harder, feeling heat spread over his cheeks. "I mean... I could be--"

"Stop," Sam says. Her smile fades and she presses her palm over Dean's open hand. "Hey. Seriously. I don't need ownership rights, Dean, I wouldn't even if we were fucking. I'm not the jealous type."

Dean blinks. If they were fucking. Apparently whatever this was didn't count. "Would you be jealous if I were? I mean, what if I am the jealous type?"

She shrugs like she has no idea what he's talking about. "I dunno, are you? Why are we playing emotional hypotheticals? Next you'll want to be doing the quizzes in Cosmo or something."

Dean ignores the random bitching, which is easy enough to do after all. He's had practice. "I'm more yours than I ever was Cassie's," he says, steady as he can.

Sam looks away. "No one asked you to be," she says, a little too loud. Dean doesn't remember getting up, but he finds he's on his feet, stalking up to her.

It's pure impulse that makes Dean lean down and cup her chin, press a kiss on her downturned mouth. "No one had to. I just am."

He doesn't know what he expects. Probably for Sam to back off, get angry. Scratch and spit and slice with her tongue. He kneels down beside her on the bed and watches her, waits for it. She stares, her eyes wide and green under thick brown lashes. Her lips are still parted.

"I don't wanna dance around this, Sammy," he whispers, soft and unhappy. "I keep thinking we've settled it and you keep dancing in and out like we haven't. Are you in or out?"

"That's not fair," she whispers back. "This isn't fair."

"I love you," he tells her. She closes her eyes. "I'm not going to stop. I'm always going to help you, whether you want... anything else from me. Or not. But, I still want to know. In or out?"

She bites her lower lip. Her eyelids wrinkle, like they're under pressure. "Fuck you, no one asked you to," she whispers, almost too soft to hear. Then she moves.

She's fast, Sam always seems to move so fast when whatever forces are inside her big brain shifting things around click and connect. Her hands are on him, and her mouth. Wet and fierce, teeth sinking down into his lower lip like a warning. This is what you want? This is what you get. He tastes his own blood on his tongue, sharp and iron-bitter.

"Fuck me," he whispers, and it's an offer. His hands slide over hers, tangling their fingers together. "If you want."

Sam snorts, half laugh and half hysteria that Dean doesn't understand. Her hair slides over her face, covering it up, and only the green of her eyes shine through. Beautiful, half wild. "Fine," she says. "Fine." She slides her hands down until they're gripping his wrists. Her fingers are long, solid for a girl's. Bony. She's young, she looks painfully young and it's not the first time he wonders exactly how young.

He lets her press his hands down, lets her press his body down against the bed underneath him. "Keep them there," she says, and he does, presses his palms flat against the covers. She doesn't smile, her face is still, smooth with concentration. He wants her to smile.

Her hands are practiced, easy, when she undoes the buttons on his fly and tugs the zipper down so she can pull out his shirt.

She pushes his shirt up after, letting it catch on his shoulders before tugging it over his head. Not all the way off, she leaves it tangled in his wrists, snaring them. "Sam," he whispers and then bites back a groan when her mouth slides over the hollow of his throat, warm and wet.

He never thought of his nipples as sensitive until she gets there with her teeth. Sharp and soft by turns until he's whimpering and hard. She rocks against him while she sucks, her denim clad ass rubbing over the thin layer so his boxers, his cock trapped underneath.

"I wanna see you too," he says, ready to reach up, reach for her, but she pushes his hands back down, twisting his t-shirt tighter around them. Somehow that makes him even hotter and his hips jerk up, rubbing against her. He can smell her, her shampoo, the trickle of sweat and the antiseptic he'd dabbed on her wrists this morning.

"You've already seen me," she whispers. "Now it's my turn."

Dean opens his mouth to tell her how fair that isn't, but she's not waiting on him. She kisses it closed, pressure on his sore, bitten lip, and her mouth, slick and sweet. He forgets to speak, forgets his name. She just smirks when the kiss breaks and he's panting too hard to remember why he should find that irritating. She slides back onto her heels and he groans at the loss.

"Got you a present," she says, and tugs something out of her pocket and then undoes and kicks off her jeans and panties. He blinks at the package, so slow and stupid he hardly recognizes it's a condom until she's opened it up and is rolling it over his cock. "I've been thinking about this too, don't think I haven't," she whispers, slow and earnest, like she's daring him to do God knows what.

Dean certainly doesn't have a clue, not about anything but how sweet she feels when she presses herself against the head of his cock and slides down. She's tight and she grits her teeth like she hasn't done this in a long time and stays still around him for a full count of thirty before she starts to move.

"Fuck," he whispers and he tips his throat back, body arched into a groan. Her mouth is on him a second later, teeth grazing the place where his throat and neck meet. He thrusts up to meet her again and again, lets her take him deep, lets her take him. He comes hard and fast and too soon, like he's a teenage boy all over again and she groans and rests her chin on his chest.

"Dude," she hisses. "I wasn't done yet." He gives a weary laugh, covering his eyes with his bound wrists. He could pull the shirt the rest of the way off but for some reason he doesn't.

"Gimme a second," he mutters while she rolls off him. He waits for his pulse to come down and then he moves, awkward with his hands still tangled and tied in front of him. Her legs part a little and she makes a surprised sound when his head slips in between them.

She tastes of lube and latex and smells of sweat and arousal. It shouldn't taste good, but he's operating on instinct, sex hungry and triggered. Her hands are in his hair and he thinks if there were enough to grip she'd be pulling it. She makes little sounds, warm, wet and surprised and he wonders how often she did this. She must have, but still, she comes apart so easily under his tongue like he's something new and good. He likes that thought and it makes him smile afterwards, cheek pressed against her thigh and breathing her in.

It's not until she whispers, "Jess, Jessica," that he closes his eyes and moves away. He thinks later that she must not even have known she'd done it. He thinks that maybe he _is_ the jealous type and maybe that means he sucks a little harder than he wants to.

Dean doesn't remember falling asleep that night, but he must have done it because when he wakes up it's light outside and Sam is bent over her binder of notes, fully dressed and washed with her hair as combed as it gets, lower lip sucked in with concentration. Her pen scratches along on paper and she doesn't even look when he groans and sits up on his elbows.

"Find the secrets of the demon world or what?" he groans. Sam smiles without looking at him.

"Take a shower," she tells him, her head still bent over her notes. "You've got an evil racist truck to kill, hero boy, and you smell bad."

"You totally love the way I smell. It gets you hot," Dean mutters but he goes anyway.

\

In the end, Sam's the one who guesses how to solve their evil truck problem, which sort of figures. She's the one who sits down next to Cassie's mother and looks her right in the eye, "A lot of people connected to you are dying, Ma'am," she says. "Is there something you need to tell us? Before your daughter is next?"

The woman bite her lip and stares at the table in front of her, at everything except for Cassie. Cassie who leans against the wall and looks like she'd rather be anywhere but here. "It was all such a long time ago," she whispers. "You can't expect me to believe that it has anything to do with now..."

"Mom," Cassie says. "Momma. Believe me. Talk to us. These two can make it stop." Her mother winces but doesn't say anything.

Sam's mouth quirks. "Tell the truth and shame the devil, Ma'am" she says.

Cassie's mother sighs, soft and long and then looks up, finally. At Cassie, with a tight smile. Then at Sam. Sam looks back. "What do you expect me to say? It was me he wanted and he couldn't handle that I left him for a black man?" she asks, loud, her voice cracking a little. "That he went on a rampage in revenge... killed people, burned down a church with a full choir inside?"

"If that's the truth," Sam says, before Cassie can say a word. Sam leans forward, implacable. "What happened to him? Who killed him? Where's the body?"

The woman covers her face with her hands. "We did. We had to. We had to stop him."

"Where's the body, mom?" Cassie asks, finally stepping forward.

The woman looks at Sam instead of Cassie before she closes her eyes. "I bet your mother would have done it for you, huh?" she murmurs.

"Sure," Sam says, so steadily that Dean's sure he's the only one who knows she's lying.

Mrs. Robinson takes a shuddering breath, tears her hands away from her face and speaks. Afterwards, she looks at Sam again. "You really think the devil feels shame?" she asks.

Sam blinks and scratches the back of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair. "How should I know?" she says. "I never thought to ask."

After that, it's all logistics and Sam's the one who finds a way around burning the thing too. Dean riles the thing up and smokes it out and drives away from it as fast as the Impala can take him, while Sam speaks in his ear through the telephone line, stupidly steady and cool in a way his dick likes a little too much as if the adrenaline of the chase is making it misfire.

Sam directs him right through the ruins of an old black church where a full choir died inside, and whatever forces are left there take the thing on his tail down with them. He sees light, that's all, and then it's gone.

Cassie and Sam are both waiting for him as the Impala stills in front of Cassie's mother's place. Cassie comes running before Dean's all the way out of the car. She's got tears in her eyes and a tight expression. "You did it," she tells him. "Thank you. Thank you."

Dean lets her hug him, hugs her back. She smells sweet, like well kept, well washed girl. Not like Sam though. Never like Sam.

"It's okay," he says, soft. Trying to be reassuring. "Everything's going to be okay now." He looks over her shoulder at Sam, hanging back in the doorway. Sam's white knuckled and straight backed, but she smiles when she sees him looking.

Dean goes to her the second Cassie takes a step back and releases him. "What would you have done if it didn't work?" he asks.

Sam blinks and her smile falters. "It... honestly never occurred to me it wouldn't."

"Someday you're going to be wrong, you know," Dean says and shakes his head. He can't help smiling anyway.

Sam laughs at him. "They always told me pride was my besetting sin," she says. She steps up close to him, but she ducks away when he tries to touch and smiles at Cassie instead. "It was a pleasure to meet you," she says.

Cassie smiles back. "You take care of him," she says. "You're a lucky woman."

Sam's eyes go wide. "I told you he was my bro--"

"Your brother, yeah, I heard you when you said that." Cassie rolls her eyes. "Give me a little credit, girl. Like I said, you're a very lucky woman."

"I'll take care of him," Sam says. "If I can."

\

After Dean parks the Impala in an open field just out of sight of the main road and Sam takes her shirt off. She looks him in the eyes when she does it and she smiles when Dean does. She looks fearless, as usual.

Sam's hands are strong for a woman's, fine fingered and easy on Dean's skin. Her mouth is warm, eager. "You smell good," she tells him in a whisper. "God, you smell so good."

"Yeah," he mumbles, breathing her in.

His fingers spread over her shoulder. The knotted shiny burn scars pressed under his palm. They look painful, though they probably aren't anymore. He kisses it, tastes it on his tongue. Smooth. Sam's eyes on him are serious when he looks up.

"You really do have a scar fetish, huh?" she asks, but there's no malice behind the words and a second later she smiles. Her eyes are bright and she's impossibly strong, tough. Relentless. Dean feels warmth, fierce and bright. This girl. His girl.

"Yeah," he says. "Maybe just a Sam fetish."

Sam makes a face but doesn't answer that one. "Fuck me the way you want to," Sam tells him instead, leaning over him. "It's your turn."

"Turns? Sounds kind of juvenile," Dean says and sticks his tongue out at her. She laughs and smacks him lightly.

"You're juvenile, asshole," she hisses through the laughter. He smirks and leans forward so he can lick the tip of her nose. That only makes her laugh harder. She looks young like that. He wants her to be young like that, as young as she really is.

He cups his palm against her cheek. "I like it when you laugh for me," he says.

Sam's smile fades a little goes wistful, but she turns her cheek so that her lips can press against Dean's fingers. "Okay," she tells him. "Okay."


	6. Toil and Trouble (Fire Burns)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam goes missing from a road house in the middle of nowhere.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Takes place reasonably soon after [Ceasefire](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/60742.html). You'll want to be up to date on the [girl!Sam stories](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) before reading.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Toil and Trouble (girl!Sam/Dean)** _

Yay, I'm kind of on a roll with girl!Sam verse right now. I really need to get cracking on Big Bang though, so there may not be another part for a while.

Title: Toil and Trouble (Fire Burns)  
Rating: PG-13  
Pairing: girl Sam/Dean  
Summary: Sam goes missing from a road house in the middle of nowhere.   
Notes: Takes place reasonably soon after [Ceasefire](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/60742.html). You'll want to be up to date on the [girl!Sam stories](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam) before reading.

  


 

Sam disappears without warning from a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere. She taps Dean on the shoulder in between rounds of a game of pool and whispers something about finding the Ladies' and then she's gone. Her notebook, covered with her scribbled, almost hieroglyphic shorthand, is still open on the table where she'd been curled up waiting form him and her pathetically empty duffel is still tucked into the trunk of Dean's car when he checks.

She's just gone. Dean goes back inside and calls after her, but no one's seen her since he did. Six foot of girl just disappeared into the mist. He screams after her in the parking lot like she's going to answer, hoping she's just distracted.

"Sam!" he calls. "Sammy!" She doesn't call him back.

He doesn't have a breakdown, not one he'd admit to. He doesn't fantasize about her hitching down the road in nothing but the clothes she had on her back, slipping in beside some guy, looking him right in the face and telling him she's gonna pay for a ride 'in trade' if he wants it. She wouldn't do that... Dean still has her notebook. She wouldn't leave her notebook.

That means something took her. That meant Dean had to find her. He took a deep breath and nodded to himself-- twenty-two years as a hunter and if there was one thing he could do real well, it was track. There's not a lot to go on, just a half full dirt parking lot with the wheel ruts of more cars than Dean wants to think about. Any one of them could have taken her. Pretty girls disappear all the time and no one finds them.

Not Sam, though. Sam's not some nobody girl that no one wants. Dean already knows there's a demon with a lien on her and that... maybe that's the place to start. He steps out into the crossroad, tasting the grit and fear in the back of his throat like road dust.

It's like wishing calls her to him.

"Hello, Dean." The voice comes from behind him, a woman's, low and rough, like she's spent years smoking. When Dean spins around he sees her, wrinkled and worn, like a mile of bad road. Eyes as red as blood, gleaming in the dark. He knows her for what she is right off.

"Demon," he whispers. Demons are stories, monsters in the dark. The thing behind Sam's eyes, behind his father's, but he's never been this close before, not and known it. She winks at him like she knows that.

"You called?" she croons, the voice coming out sweet, tender. A parody of seduction. "I came."

"I didn't call you," Dean hisses back at her. His brain is twisting, trying to remember something that stops demons. Salt and holy water. Prayers. Does he know any prayers? He can't remember. Ordinary guns will just kill the host, he knows that much.

She smiles and shakes her head, slow and rueful, like a kindergarten teacher talking down to a bad little boy. "You're wrong. You're thinking about pretty little Sammy so loud that you bent our ears down in the pit. Who did you think you were calling, angels?"

"Where is she?" he demands. It feels dumb, yelling at something he has no clue how to fight. If Sam were here, she'd know what to do.

"She's lost," the demon tells him and smiles and smiles. "She's been lost a long time and no one came looking. Not you and not your Daddy. Are you looking now, Dean?"

"Tell me where she is!" Dean says and he hates the note in his voice, the one that quivers, that sounds like fear. The demon laughs at him.

"Maybe... maybe she's down in the dark," she says. "She belongs there, she always did. Someday she'll come crawling out, but I don't think you'll be happy to see her then."

"You took her," Dean whispers. Suddenly it doesn't matter that there's a human woman behind those alien red eyes. He launches himself at her, fists at his side, just wanting to see blood. Wanting to see someone else hurt.

She's faster than him and the next thing he feels is the impact of the ground on his back when he falls flat into the dirt. "No," she says and smiles. "She might have been in the dark, but she isn't. This time it wasn't us." She stalks up to him and stares down like she's very far away. The steel toe of her boot presses up against his bare throat. The edge of threat. "Watch out for those humans you're trying so hard to save, could be they're the really dangerous ones, Dean." He can feel her breath when she leans down over him. "Could be we're not so different from them."

"Where is Sam?" Dean hisses, gasping at the feel of the boot on his neck.

"What will you give me to know?" The demon tilts her head and grins. This grin is different, lighter, stranger. Like she's not just mocking him... like it's the best thing ever.

"What do you want?" Dean says. He tries to sound angry, not freaked out. Not wondering if Sam's in trouble or alone or scared. Not wondering if she even knows he's looking for her.

The demon shuts her eyes for a moment, as if considering that question really seriously. Than she opens them again. They blaze fire red like cheap candy. "Tell you what," she says, softer, considering. "This one time, I'll do it for love." She leans in real close and whispers two things to him. The first one is an address. The other...

_Tell Samantha that Ruby said hello. Tell her I'll be seeing her real soon and she better think about whose skin I might be riding when I do._

Dean swears to himself that he's not freaked out, not even a little. Demons lie, it says so in all the books he's never read but his dad or Bobby told him about. Sam would probably tell him the same thing if she were here to ask. Demons lie.

So does Sam, but he's not thinking about that now.

\  
He finds Sam in a cage in an filthy outbuilding that had probably lived its first life as a barn. The place stinks of old blood and sweat, but she doesn't look hurt, just smudged a little. She stands up as far as the bars will let her and smiles when she sees him. A real smile, bright, vivid, showing the whites of her teeth and the light in her eyes.

"Sam," he says. "Sammy."

"You came," she says, like she wanted to be sure he would. "You came and found me." Like she's glad. He can feel himself smiling back like it's contagious, grin stretching his face and somehow all the doubts are gone. Whatever this is, it's not her fault.

"Yeah," he says. "Course." All the thoughts smashing around in his brain like a losing game of tetris but somehow the one that comes out on top is that today he gets to save her from something, if not everything. He wonders if that earns him victory nookie and the look on her face, almost lit up from within, tells him maybe.

"There are three of them. Two younger guys and one old one. They have a little girl in the main house too." Sam's already moved on to something else though, she's nodding at the locks keeping her cage closed. "They locked me in with some kind of electronic key. I don't know if--"

Dean doesn't wait for her to say another word, he's already on the lock, shaking it, trying to figure out how it works. It's teeth grindingly frustrating and he has to drop his hands after a minute of it. Sam presses up against the bars, looking as frustrated as he feels.

"Shit," he mutters. "I'll have to find it."

"There was another guy in here with me," she says and nods toward an empty cage across the room. "I don't know what they did with him."

Dean doesn't look. "Do you know what they are? Any powers? Anything weird about them?" Ruby had said they were human, but Dean isn't dumb enough to take her word for it.

Sam shrugs. "I think they're just a bunch of crazy hillbillies," she mutters. "They're definitely not demonic."

"People. Wow. Yeah, I guess you'd know," Dean mutters. He can see something sharpen behind Sam's gaze and feel her looking at him, but then she blinks and it's gone. He sucks in a breath. "I'm going to get you out of here, okay?"

Sam smiles. "I've got that much faith," she says. Then she's pushing her fingers through the bars and grabbing onto his. Just for a second, but he feels her, warm and alive. "Go and find the key. I promise to make it worth your while." Before he has a chance to pull back she kisses him, just a peck through the bars, her lips dry on his.

Dean holds onto her for a second and then he goes. Later, he'll have time for questions later, when things are less... less.

\

They catch him sneaking into the main house. Two of them, young looking, young as Sam, and filthy in the way that shows they can't be bothered to get clean. One of them has a shot gun to Dean's face and all he can think about is Sam, Sammy and how great a job he's doing rescuing her after all from a bunch of hillbilly kids of all stupid things.

Mo and Larry or whatever they're named, drag him inside, sniggering all the way. There's an older guy waiting, balding, cracked teeth with wide gaps that his smirk shows off.

"Look what we got, Pa," Mo or Larry says. "Caught him snooping around the game barn." Dean rolls his eyes and Larry or Mo kicks him in the shin, leaving him gasping. "Think he's here about that girl we got? The wildcat?"

The man smiles, giving Dean and even better view of the gaps between his teeth. He thinks there might be bits of decaying food caught in there. Gross. "She your woman, pretty boy?" he asks. Drops of spit blast out with the words, splattering onto Dean's nose and it's all he can do not to flinch. "Cause, I gotta say, she seems like too much woman for a pretty boy like you. I doubt you can keep her in line proper."

"If you touched her," Dean hisses before the fucker finishes insinuating whatever he's trying to. "If you touched her I will tear you apart."

The man just laughs like Dean's the best joke ever. "We're going to do a whole lot more than touch her," he says. "Me and my boys are hunters, pretty boy. We got a family tradition to uphold."

Dean shakes his head and tries to back up, but Mo and Larry are right behind him, a solid brick holding him tight. Their old man leans in again, staring into Dean's eyes. "Now you tell me something and I promise not to hurt her before we take her down. Nice clean hunt. Tell me, did you come here by yourself or are there any other idiots on my land?"

Dean smirks. "Oh, believe me, even if you get me, my friends are going to find you and your sick little family."

The man grabs Dean's face, forcing him closer. The grip is brutal on his skin, there'll be bruises if he lives long enough. "So," he says. "Just you and her, right? Well, listen, pretty, how about I give you a chance to be a real man and look out for your woman, hmm?"

"What do you want?" Dean asks, even though he knows the answer.

"If you give us a good hunt, we might be willing to let her go, maybe? Hmm?" The man is grinning, a fucking gap-toothed liar. Dean doesn't care, this will buy her time. She needs time.

"Yeah. Fine," he says without a pause. "Give me a weapon and let me run and I'll give you the hunt of your life."

The man stares at him for a long, rough moment, like he's assessing something in Dean's face. Then he grins and smacks him hard on the shoulder. "Maybe you will. Not yet, though." He turns to his sons. "Tie him to the chair, good and tight. Then kill the girl," he says. "Shoot her and drag the meat in for pretty boy to see."

Mo makes a noise, "Kill her-- but Pa, I wanna play--"

"We ain't animals, just hunters. Kill her. No funny business, boy."

Dean can hear himself shouting over the old man's voice. Harsh and incoherent, almost mindless screaming. "No! I will kill you all! I will burn you to fucking ash, you will never stop screaming! Take me, not her! No!"

The old man laughs at him while his sons tie him down, tight and relentless like the fuckers learned knots from the fucking boy scouts. Dean screams his way through it until his voice can't keep it up any longer and he and the old man are left staring at each other.

The man grins. "Wait for that gunshot and say goodbye to your woman," he says.

Dean squeezes his eyes closed and tries not to think about how really bad he fucked this one up. His hands twist in their bonds but he can tell there's no way he's getting out in time-- all he's doing now is making his wrists bleed.

The shot comes some indeterminate time later. A one-two blast. Someone screams. It takes a minute for it to penetrate Dean's fog that the scream wasn't a woman's. Wasn't Sam. His eyes snap over and he can see the man is already on his feet, clutching his gun.

He gestures to the shadows and someone steps out, small and haltingly, like the leg doesn't quite work right. It's a little girl in a dress as dirty as the boys' overalls. There's lank, filthy hair hanging off her head. But it's combed and twisted around a white ribbon like someone made an effort. "Pa?" she asks.

"Watch him, Missy," the man orders. The little girl nods and pulls out a knife, sharp and wicked looking, and pressed way too close to Dean's eye. "Cut him if he looks at you wrong."

Dean stares at the little girl, hands still twisting in his bonds and she stares back. Her eyes are a muddy pale color, lighter than Sam's. Dean swallows. "Missy, right? If you let me go, Missy, I won't hurt you."

Missy shrugs and looks away. She doesn't say anything and Dean wonders vaguely if she can. He tries again. "They're hurting my friend," he says, not caring that he's begging. "You don't want that, do you?" Never mind that if she's anything like her crazy family, that's exactly what she wants.

"The lady they put in the barn. She was nice. She said she'd help me brush my hair," Missy whispers. "She said her Pa wasn't very good with hair either after her Ma died too."

Dean blinks and forces a smile. Little girls... Jesus, he doesn't want to see Sam in every single little girl, sister Sam, baby soft, or the crazy beautiful Sam who might be getting her fool ass killed right now. The little girl in front of him is the one he needs to see. "She's really nice," he says, soft as he can. "Help me, Missy. Let me help her."

Missy bites her lip and rocks on her toes, the knife in her hand wavering dangerously. "My Pa would be mad," she mumbles. "He's a mean mad." Dean's already got his mouth open, geared up to make some kind of promise, some kind of case, but Missy's moving before he gets the chance. "She said I didn't have to always be around mad people," she explains and then the sharp tip of her knife is pricking under the knot of Dean's bonds, slicing through.

"Go get her," Missy says. "I'll tell Pa you got away from me." Dean doesn't wait for an invitation. This girl isn't his Sam. His Sam is in trouble and she's the one he's going to save.

He runs, trying to keep to cover, to not get caught again but not slow down all at the same time. It's damned far from easy, doing that.

He finds Mo's... or maybe Larry's body sprawled in the dirt outside the empty cage where they'd been keeping Sam. His pants are undone, twisted around his ankles and his shriveled up and bare, which is somehow more embarrassing with how dead he is. There's a hole in his head that isn't bleeding anymore, big enough it probably came from a large gage shot gun. Dean half wonders if taking off his pants and trying to do... whatever... had been his idea or if Sam had taunted him into.

"Your last mistake," he hisses and kicks the corpse once in the balls, just because he can. Inside the cage, with the door locked, is the other brother. He's got his pants on and as far as Dean can tell from this angle he's still breathing too, but he doesn't care enough to do a thorough check.

Instead he stalks off to find Sam. If he had any doubt she's still alive and killing things, that's gone now and whatever else might be true, that's enough to keep him smiling.

He finds her outside by a tree with Pa Hillbilly holding a gun to her head. She's stiff and still and he can tell she hasn't seen Dean yet.

"You hurt me family. I'll bleed you, bitch," Pa Hillbilly howls. "You're gonna die slow."

"No, she won't," Dean says. He uses the moment of distraction when the old man looks at him to jump the fucker and wrestle the gun away. He's got the fucker sprawled on the floor, finger on the trigger and ready to blast when a hand on his shoulder stops him.

It's Sam, her grip is tight, hard enough to bruise. "He's got a little girl," she says.

Dean tilts his head, but doesn't take his eyes off the man on the floor. "He ain't exactly in the running for father of the year."

Sam makes a low sound and doesn't loosen her grip. "Was yours?"

Dean shudders but still doesn't move. "What about yours? Would you have wanted someone to end him for you?"

Sam huffs what sounds like a laugh. "Dean," she says. "Someone did."

Dean closes his eyes. When he opens them again, Sam's poised over the old man holding what looks like a piece of metal piping. He's bleeding from the back of his head and is sprawled unconscious. "We'll put him in the cage," Sam says. "And call 911 from the road."

Dean hesitates a second. "You think that will help?"

Sam's eyebrow goes up. "What's your better idea?" she demands. She waits a pause before going on. "Help me carry him. You get the legs, I'll get the arms."

Sam helps him haul the fucker and then disappears for a few minutes, just long enough for Dean to start having twitchy waking nightmares of her being kidnapped again. He's about to start shouting her name when he hears voices coming from back by the house.

When he goes to see, Sam's sitting on the old, decaying porch with a thin plastic comb in her hand and a girl in her lap. "I don't think you'll have to cut it off, Missy," she says. "Not if we can get the tangles out. I'll try, at least."

Dean can't stop looking. The little girl smiles and puts her head on Sam's knee. "I'm glad they didn't hurt you. I wish you were my Ma," she says seriously.

Sam closes her eyes. It's getting dark enough that the wetness on her cheeks is visible, even from a distance. "You'll be okay," she whispers. "If you're not, call me. If I can, I'll come."

"Okay." Dean hears the waver in the little girl's voice and finally, finally forces himself to look away.

\

Dean spends most of the ride away from that hell hole house pretending Sam isn't crying, that everything is okay. "Social services will definitely come take that kid," he offers, like that's a good thing instead of the nightmare of his childhood. Someone taking him from Dad. For that kid it _would_ be a good thing.

Sam's mouth quirks sideways. "There are worse things than social services," she says, like Dean had repeated any of his thoughts out loud.

It's not until they're holed up in a hotel room, watching the story about the crazy hillbilly serial killers break on the local news that Dean asks the question he's been putting on hold.

"Hey, so," he begins.

Sam blinks at him and flicks off the television. "You have on your serious face. What is it?"

"Does the name Ruby mean anything to you?" he finally blurts out, words spilling in quick succession. He doesn't know what kind of response he's expecting. He only knows it's not what he gets.

Sam moves as fast as if she'd been training for years. Ducking for her duffel bag like all she can think about is getting a weapon in her hand. "Christo," she hisses. "Christos."

Dean's jaw drops and he shakes his head, raising his empty hands. "What? I'm not... I'm me, Sammy."

Sam doesn't stop, she grabs something in her hand that looks like a vial of water. Probably holy water. "If you are, say a pater noster," she demands.

"What?" Dean begins, but the glare shuts him up. "Our father who art in heaven," he says. "Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this our daily bread and--"

"And forgive us our trespasses," Sam interrupts softly and finishes the prayer along with him, voices blending. "You're you, then, I guess," she says when they're done.

"Yeah, duh," Dean mumbles. "Now, talk to me about Ruby. She freaks you out pretty hard, huh?" He frowns. "She said she loved you. She wanted me to tell you hello."

Sam laughs, painful and loud. "She's a demon, a servant of Azazel as far as I know. She likes to fuck me."

"What?" Dean knows he's staring and can't stop.

"You heard me. She has this thing for possessing the bodies of people I'm fucking so that she gets a turn." Sam sounds like she's trying real hard to sound matter of fact. Dean doesn't know if the fact it doesn't work has more to do with this hurting Sam more than usual or if he's just getting better at reading Sam's little non-expressions.

"She's not possessing me," he says, sharp as he can.

Sam smiles. It's a vague, unhappy expression. "If she does, it won't be your fault, you know? I wouldn't blame someone for something like that."

"She won't," Dean says, louder, almost shouting. Like by shouting it, he makes it true. "Okay? She won't."

Sam looks away. "Yeah, fine," she mutters. "She won't. But if she does, it'll be... it'll be okay."

Dean takes a slow, shuddering breath and then closes the distance between them and holds Sam hard and tight.

\

That night he dreams of Ruby, red and black eyed by turn, morphing from body to body. She wears Jess' skin briefly, the snatched glimpse of girl perverting into something else before his eyes. She wears Sam's too, twisting her rage into something worse. Then, at the end, she's wearing Dean's own. His own face smirking at him, demon eyed.

"She's really into this face," his own mouth tells him. "I wonder what she'd sell to keep it if someone tried to take you away? She already sold her soul so that's out."

"She didn't sell you fuck," Dean hisses. "Her father-- adopted father--"

Ruby tilts his... her head like he's under a microscope and then just bursts into laughter, bright and loud, echoing against the concrete. "Oh, Dean, Dean, you are too funny. Don't you know about the conditions of damnation? No one can damn a human soul but itself. Your sweet little Sam agreed to her deal, deep down she even wanted it."

"She said--"

"For someone with a reputation as a big, bad brilliant hunter you are awfully pretty, Dean Winchester," the demon woman croons. "Isn't it obvious that she lied?"

"Yeah, I'm going to believe you over Sam," Dean says. He can see Sam's face, tight and certain. No way he believes a demon without Sam's say so. No way.

"Believe whatever gets you through the night," she says, but she's still smirking, like she knows a secret, ripe and nasty and right below the surface like maggots under skin. "Just ask Samantha one thing, if you've got the nerve to."

"What?" Dean spits. "What's your poison, just spill it!"

The demon woman moves closer, almost gliding, and gives a twisted, kittenish smile that distorts his face, makes it strange and wrong and agonizing to watch. "Ask Samantha what happened to her awful, awful Daddy Dearest. I'd think that if he was the one who got something in return for her soul he'd be living it up somewhere. If, on the other hand, he died a sudden and nasty death..."

"Fuck you," Dean howls. "I don't need this shit."

He wakes up twisted in the sheets, struggling and sweating. Sam is already awake, watching him out of hollow eyes. "Christo," she whispers.

"Relax, Sammy." Dean shakes his head as though he were anything like relaxed himself. "I'm not her."

Sam's eyes shut tightly. "You almost don't have to be to drive me crazy now," she says. "I guess she really is that good."

Dean shifts over closer to her, close enough to feel the warmth of her skin and shaking of her muscles. "Sam?" he asks. "Can I-- if I asked you something, would you tell me the truth?"

Sam's eyes snap open and she stares at him for a long moment before looking away again. "Maybe," she finally says. "Sure. Okay. What's the question?"

Dean opens his mouth to ask and then doesn't. Just sits there open mouthed until he can almost see the urge to crack a joke in Sam's eyes. Anything to kill the moment. "Do you, did you--" then he stops again. "Have you ever heard of a way to prevent demonic possession?"

Sam blinks. Obviously that wasn't the question she expected either, but she stops, seeming to think it over. "Sure. There are a lot of charms for that. Most of them are fake, though, from what I can tell."

"Well, most isn't all," Dean says firmly. "How about we find a real one?"

Sam gives him a strange look and then she laughs. "Yeah, okay. Sure, we'll do that," she says. Dean doesn't even care that she's laughing at him. He leans forward and kisses her, kisses her pretty, laughing mouth, tastes her sweaty skin.

"Cool, then you can stop worrying about-- that. Now, I want my victory nookie," he growls.

Sam's laugh is louder, more real. If it edges right off into dodged a bullet style hysteria, Dean can live with that. "You totally couldn't have pulled it off without my help," she teases.

Dean just shakes his head and cups one of her breasts through her shirt, listening as the laughter cuts off into a groan when he rubs a thumb against her nipple.

"That's fine," he whispers into her ear. "You can have some victory nookie too."


	7. Highway 66 Porno

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You see the title? It's like that. A pwp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is girl!Sam verse, but it's somewhere ahead of all the completed stories in the timeline.

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[girl!sam](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/girl%21sam), [supernatural](http://vaingirlfic.livejournal.com/tag/supernatural)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **SPN fic: Highway 66 Porno** _

Title: Highway 66 Porno  
Rating: Vicious pornography  
Summary: You see the title? It's like that. A pwp.  
Notes: This is girl!Sam verse, but it's somewhere ahead of all the completed stories in the timeline.  
  


Dean had never seen Sam in a skirt before. He didn't even know she owned one until she pulled a piece of slightly crumpled fabric out of the bottom of her duffel and shimmied into it when she got dressed this morning.

"Are you pretending to be a real girl today or what?" he'd asked, palm on his chin and a wolf whistle handy while she zipped herself up.

"Aw, baby, I thought you said I was gorgeous just the way I was," Sam mocked and rolled her eyes.

He didn't get the point of the skirt until five hours down the road when they hit a reststop. It was gray and dingy, stinking of antiseptic and cheap cleaner, but Dean wasn't there for the ambiance. He was just there to piss, shake it off and go.

He's have done just that if someone cold hand hadn't pressed right up against the back of his neck while he was pulling up his zipper. "Fuck!" he howled, thinking ghosts, monsters, anything that was out to get poor dumb fucks by the urinal. Sam would bust herself coming up with a pathetic epitaph for him. Sam would...

Sam was whispering in his ear and looping her free fingers through his belt. "Stall now," she murmured. "Don't bother with the buttons, I'd just have to undo them."

Dean, not being a complete dumbass, just swallowed, nodded and followed along. Her cold hand warmed up against his neck and she kept on pulling him by the belt. He caught her expression in the mirror and he wasn't even a little surprised the little bitch was grinning like she's pulled one over on him.

Sam wasn't a small girl and Dean was a pretty big guy himself, but the handicapped stall in the corner was more than enough space. Especially when Sam took his hand and hers and slid it up that little skirt, showing him without needing to say a word that there was nothing but bare, warm girl under the cloth.

"Jesus, Sammy," he hissed and she smirked and leaned up to kiss him. Her mouth was warm and unexpectedly gentle. Her hands were anything but, manhandling his jeans down with his eager help until he was wearing them around his ankles.

"Come on," she urged and he didn't need to be invited twice. She just about climbed him, hiking her skirt up and wrapping her legs around his waist while the force of her body hitting the wall made the whole stall shake.

"You come on," he muttered into her shoulder. Her sleeves were still long and the flannel still covered her skin, but he could smell her underneath it. Hotel soap and clean sweat. Her deodorant underneath.

She laughed, leaning forward until he could feel the tickle of her hair on his forehead. "Coming on," she whispered. "Some of us actually can take direction." Then she twisted around, heels digging into his thighs, climbing just a little more and slid down on Dean's bare dick and he forgot everything he'd been thinking about for the last five seconds. Minutes. Years, maybe.

He must have howled, must have thrust up and made the walls rattle. He didn't remember, just knew about wet and hot, friction tight. The feel of her hands digging into his shoulders and the taste of her mouth, the candy bar she'd had instead of lunch.

It never even occurred to him that he hadn't used a condom until afterward, when they were washing their hands in the chipped yellow sink. Sam was giving her most cheerful wave to a poor bastard who'd wandered in to take a leak and must have heard the whole thing. If it-- any of it-- bothered her she never even raised an eyebrow to show it.

She just winked, like it was all cool and said, "See, skirts are good for something, Dean-o."


End file.
